Some Gentle Apparatus

 

Strange to be a child and sit around

and listen to your mother talk –
to sense the quiet machinations
of some gentle apparatus in her –

running through their measured paces –
letting everything seem possible
without much fuss: sound and something
quite remote from fury signifying

nothing more or less than what it meant
for you and her to settle in the presence
of whomever she was talking to –
discussing what to do with walnuts

and pecans, or how a neighbor ran
for councilman and lost, or whether
anyone could ever be as good
as Charlton Heston was as Moses:

easy poses – lulling murmurs –
render bliss – in every memory of this.









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