Parents

Their bodies change, sudden weathers.

They come indoors like children.

Tiny chariots of hearts pull them about.

Their lives are their bodies, located there,

obvious and reduced, so in motion, they move; in pain,

they hurt.

Unanimous, unnamed energy acts around me, and I respond,

a buoyant justice, suspended and attained,

a body coming alone to its own occasion,

a boor of health

who wants them epitomized,

but they are too delicate and vague a stuff

for such violence of love,

for such black cheerleading.

Their dying is a disappointing

they can tell me very little of.

They smile like smoke, they yellow.

Their flesh is Kansas, looks slept on.

I do not like their bright clothes.

They will die on a day

and it shall be nothing much

an opera of small animals

a spilled beautiful glass of water.