On the storybook page where the grandmother puts a finger to her
chin,
glances out the window at the star-speckled dark and contemplates,
where the setter sleeps at the foot of the stairs, and the cat in step
with the children follows them up to bed, where the big clock bathes
in the firelight, and the magical farm in middle America silvers
itself into slumber, I wonder what thoughts adrift will collect
enough stardust to catch the bow of your lips when you smile,
tamed into questions. You’ve just put our boy to bed, and we’re both
tired in our shoulders and necks, though you’ve stretched on the
purple
yoga mat, the second trimester motions more reserved
than the first—except for the still-deep squats to prepare
for birth, to ease it along—and I can’t imagine we’ve left
the gate unlocked again, much less compose a response.
But you do your best thinking in the shower at night,
and I agree it’s here among our bathroom’s faux brass
fixtures scuffed through years of someone else’s use,
my feet pressed into the carpet’s rough piles—
who carpets a bathroom, and who will replace it—
that we’re most likely to puzzle out our next child’s name,
the big to-do’s, the reasons we know our love will outlast
any ten-year slump, and the secret flavor of the longings we’ve yet
to uncrate, to sample and staple down at the baseboards.
When our goose gets loose, I dream the dream that we’re pretending
to be tired, the way our son pretends to nap for a moment,
then shakes his head with the loud and vigorous question, “Wake?”
You and I nestle in each other’s arms, facing together
and away in a tornado of sheets that lofts us above the horse
as it gazes with disinterest at the defenestrated toilet, the day’s
storybook disasters, our own shingles, split and sublime.
There is no last page. The tableaux of children at bedtime—
on winged horses or with swords pointed at a troll’s neck,
or turning the page in a yellowed book with a wizard in a tower,
moon-white on the edge of a pond where a snake moils—
is not a page, but a scroll for us to unfurl.
