• The boys' hair voodoos the tomato stalks.
    We have swept it from the kitchen floor
    after haircuts & straw colored it spirals

    from the garden soil, already half-buried
    like tablets etched with Linear B,
    untranslatable among eggshells & soap flakes.

    I kneel & watch it rain upon the diligent grubs,

    beetles & the zigzag caravans of ants.
    The stalks nod with unripe Big Boys,
    Calypsos, green marbles of Cherries in clusters.

    Human hair, marigolds, Irish Spring
    I flake with a cheese grater in a talismanic
    circle, charms against squirrel & raccoon.

    High summer evening, high nineties & the boys run

    tonsured through the sprinkler spray, the sound
    as it revolves a quirky but robotic
    staccato, like the voice of David Byrne

    cackling "Once in a Lifetime." You may ask
    yourself, how do I work this?
    They will lay waste to the fruits of your labors,

    useless are all of your spells. For now the wind

    is rising. A thick, cheap scent over everything,
    scent the color of Key lime pie, scent
    the color of my father, eighteen years dead

    & stepping from the shower stall, taking in
    the steam in deep self-conscious
    breaths, his own futile talisman

    against emphysema, angina, Jim Beam.

    Soap lather beards his face. You may ask yourself,
    how did I get here? He is ash in a canister
    in the veterans cemetery in St. Paul

    & his DNA helixes up the pale outline
    of Luke's spine, glinting now
    in the sprinkler's jittery rainbows. Let the water

    hold me down. Back & forth they pace

    the sprinkler's cage. They squeal & turn to me
    in their delight. Same as it ever was, saamme
    as it ever wassss & the breeze pulls the spray

    toward me until I am mist as well. Lord,
    abide this instant back to them when I
    am ash, though I kneel absurdly with

    a cheese grater, kneepads, & a flint head

    of soap. Same as it e-ver was, same as it
    e-ver was. Sundown, mosquitoes
    tuning up, a gilt of fireflies

    slathering the Adirondack chairs.
    My knees scrape eggshell, beflowered
    with deadheaded marigolds & the tufts of hair

    billow up from the dirt to my face.