On winter evenings, when she finished painting,
my mother’s plain handled brushes
were left soaking in
a lost summer—
not in distilled turpentine ready to be dipped in
cadmium, alizerine, the colors of
skin and drizzle
but in this
product of sand, product of silica:
sensory transient of the process
of making the dense clear,
little jam jar
making obvious in alliteration its origin
in a hot afternoon when crab apples
were pulled down
from tree-tops
boiled in a copper pot,
poured into glass and left cooling:
a scalded jewel on a pantry shelf,
only to be
emptied out again
filled with turpentine and left to be
a winter emblem of dualities:
Even the crab apple is seeking
a sky of inferences to constellate with:
the rosiness of a larger fruit,
the hint of a sea creature sidling in
another element.
When I was expecting my second child
my mother turned to me. She said
Surely you don’t believe
you’re two souls at this moment?