kissing the back of her head
in the kitchen
            just now
was innocence.
my most tender love,

    my mother’s.
a sacred kind, that’s scared of the world,
or that the meat’s undercooked.

and she’s held
    by my father’s broad traveled hands,
dumb in the way of fixing things
or hammering nails,
but versed in nature,
and the nature of carrying burdens.

it’s all there, in the trees of it.

the twisted blood, inveined,
stretching across
the breadth of her little ribs,
holding close
everything i stand to lose—

if the earth ever:shake,
or the dam ever/break,

or if i begin to miss the
night.