ONCE
Once, I pulled at a box
from, under my mother’s bed and inside found
the treasures of her universe
in a time before.
There were dancing shoes with high heels worn,
the tiniest dress of finest gossamer and silver.
In a time before
I inhabited the landscape
there is a picture
of my father in his dinner suit
silhouetted against an eastern sky of eternal promise
gazing out from his youthful face and place into mine
without knowing where he was going.
Like a tender plant curling towards his wife, his child, his me.