Impossible Things

I keep talking to the baby

even though she’s long since gone

trying to reach that place inside me

trying to lure her soul back in

I keep talking to the baby

telling her about all the things she’s missing

our home, her mother, her father

all the things we have planned for her

the older brother that keeps asking

“When is the baby coming back?”

      In December

snow falls in my boots and for one

beautiful instant

it feels like sand, crunches under my foot

before melting against the warmth

of my toes.

I pray desperately

for sand, clean beach sand

compacting and sliding beneath

my feet, bare feet

and sunshine and real waves

and I’d even welcome a sunburn.

it’s December and I wonder

what I’m doing here, how

years of living within earshot of

crashing surf and screaming seagulls

led to this house on the frozen

prairie, this land of frozen lakes

where it gets so cold even the sparrows

are afraid to sing.

          In Retrospect

yes—feet buried in red mud, fire sloughs past in gentle molten waves—I have been here before.  First man on Venus and all I can think about is sweatshops in Orange County, machine shop at the junior college down the street, the skin of young men blistering at the touch of synthetic lightning.

yes—I have seen the waterfalls of rock

a thousand miles before, eyes tearing

through my security faceplate, rivers of fluid metal

cascading into vats, Man made Venus

back in Santa Ana, my boy’s first job—

eight years in college and my own son

is starting at the bottom, just like his old man—

and I wonder

if he’ll ever see this part of Venus

and think of me.