Landscape with Mother and Police

Looking up from damp grass
while wine-drunk on someone’s lawn,
I watch the birch leaves spin,
the wind twisting the stems.
Unspoken is the threat of tearing
free, unfastening one’s self
from the whole. The oscillations
rippled the dappled canopy
like a pond rocked out of sleep
into a heaving wake preparing itself
to break against the green shore.
Or perhaps the point is all
the points above breaking
into moments of light, more
like the peachleaf willows dotted
along the bank of Seurat’s Seine
where mothers stand looking,
mostly, away. What I see between
the blurred dance of lights and leaves
is you standing in the kitchen
smoking a Kool Filter King
between the small hours of night,
waiting for the phone not to ring,
waiting for the police not to knock
again. I see you pretending not to
see me as the artist standing outside
the frame, painting, with red and blue
lights, another scene on our window
panes. In the bottom right corner,
proud scratches spell out my name.