The Marble Queen

Beneath the whorish scent of magnolia,

we watch the parade

spill like a river across the avenue before us.

There in the shade I am the child

whistling at the first tide of soldiers,

their boyish hair cropped beneath berets.

There in the shade is Mother,

fixed in her common, girlish pose,

her slim legs tucked beneath her.

She pats the blanket beside her,

dusts a fly from her cheek,

then all at once runs her fingers through her hair

until they catch and snap free into the air.

I watch the blue material of her dress

dimple and lift with each gust of wind.

I am happy, I am sad, dazzled

by the wonderland of uniforms that blurs before us.

Which one is me?

I am the child with his magnifying glass

blazing the hearts from insects,

then scattering the skeletal ash.

In the gentle dreams of this child,

I could match any battalion at war like a giant

and descend from the heavens on my beanstalk

to monitor the sagging world below.

And once I’d grumbled fitfully,

left the armies bewildered like ants

amidst their hills in the ordinary geraniums,

I would ascend my fertile stalk

toward the moonlight of home.

But Mother is thinking of something else—

something beyond the river of men

marching into the pastures of violet

and violet-orange haze where they may fall,

something beyond the young son she has brought

to witness their regaling of strength—

as if the parade has caught her conscience,

and in her conscience, a thousand other women.

Some unforgettable picture wells inside her

until she sees it hovering

like the bees and mayflies humming

in the blue afternoon—

there so long, so simple,

she has misunderstood it:

the terrible monotonous despair.

And now she sits alone with it,

finds expression for it like a child

dreaming of shadows, waiting

for her mother and father to shake her from it.

And when all the armies have passed,

only their footsteps faint in the immense sunlight,

she tamps the half-moons of her eyelashes,

rises before me like a marble queen,

and seizes herself from it.