Square
Eric Davis
for my mother
Hunting for flies in the kitchen
in a miserable stretch of morning,
you came across a milk bottle,
now just an ornament,
next to a painting of a
train station in Vermont
after the war:
Rain drizzled streets,
boy selling paper,
man wearing hat, carrying cane.
A woman with an umbrella,
looking downcast at red and orange
azaleas in the plaza.
The mist from the rain
floating over the lamplight.
You thought you saw your mother
in the background, looking
like she did fifty years ago,
next to a bell tower
with a cross atop its
domed spire—may God bless it.
Although you couldn’t see
clearly through the fog, you
thought there was a road nearby,
like the one where she met father,
and he asked if she wanted
to go for an ice cream cone
and she said yes.
And they went out,
and they went out and
you saw everything.
The hot summer nights
in a cabin, the sunfish caught
on poles, clipped off
the hook and thrown back,
your sister’s brain tumor,
the coal mine and
all the Caterpillars tearing
at the pit, the bowling
alley and the tornado, your
dog they ran over and told
you it had run away, your
father spraying bees with a
hose and running away,
the 100-meter dash at
the state track meet, everything.
Suddenly, you’d forgotten about the
flies and how hot you were
and how everything was making
you dizzy, and all you could think
of was your green teddy bear,
the one you’d got for
Christmas when you were six,
and where had that gone?