daisies in the dark

Barques. A dogfight. Men argue in a strange language.
Hard to get up some days with the machines
terrorizing the soft and dear pavement.
Were we once children? Yes, Mom says.
I don't believe it.
We drove past the Black church, the alley, the Poles
who her mother called peasants. Not resentment,
contempt. She could be hard. I hear.
I'm sorry. Do I know you? You have beautiful lips.
I tell you this in the confidence of bed
under the weight of something you see and keep thinking about
a tapioca-eared boy          or coming home to flowers
left in a bottle on the window sill
filling the room with their humidity
all the next glazed day.