Bright in June Sun
The young man, kneeling at his mother’s tomb, lays red tulips there,
the young man wearing a too-big white shirt, a bit out of date, like those
on any thrift store rack, the shirt bright in June sun, so that from
a distance you see that shirt, its cumulous cloud above the granite
slab’s floating glare that could be a lake, where the boy, on a raft,
looks at a house boat on fire, or that boy could be an astronaut
in his space suit adrift, still circling the ship, or look—he’s a gull
pecking red flesh, or a polar bear, alone on an ice flow, but really
it’s just a boy below that summer cloud where a toy jet ferries people away,
a boy bending above his mother’s tomb, and it appears that space
is kneeling over time, but only because the latter has stopped.
