seven, exclamation


"There's raspberries growing
behind the fence," i tell my mother,
and when she tells me "good"
her hair grows long and red
and i see her with gloves,
in the garden, like in a photograph
i saw once. I took no photographs

because in that air, under that sky,
near that tree and those woods (in this skin)
my clumsy hands wouldn't have known
where to aim and what to grab for
memory's sake; in this grass i am
seven years old. There is a cat

on my lap or sleeping against my ankles;
the dogs inside the door are from
another era, an unarticulated past
or future that doesn't belong here.
I'd give it up to the gypsy moths,

to the raspberries, to the snow,
to Big Rock, so much smaller now.
Do you remember? You and i,
blowing bubbles, smelling wildflowers,

collapsing here: this wasp's nest,
these stinging brambles. Once upon a
midsummer, a dozen birthdays ago,

you held my hand and we
picked raspberries and scattered their seeds -

miles, millenia; you're holding my hand.


(february 2003)