the children are home.
household ghosts are filled by form
and careless dropped books and clothes
heaped onto empty chairs.

the mother is home,
slightly drunk from months of free wandering
in the world's forests
shakes of bits of glitter and grime
to become theirs again
an available warmth
through which they circulate.

blanketed by love
she settles into the background
and soon doesn’t even hear
her own sleeping.
she dreams they are a family again,
filling the house
crowding together in one room
all the people that dwell in
the innermost layer
of her heart.

the father is proud and busy.
he is santa claus
chopping wood and bearing water
for thirsty new narcissus bulbs.
his dolly is home and his teddy bear.
sometimes his face draws lines of grievance,
because they are so noisily here,
because they won’t be here long.
but mostly he smiles
in twinkles and crinkles

the party whirls colors
of conversations;
teasing, joking, gripping, holding
us all in a closing circle
til one by one spins out
beyond the others.

suddenly, silently, father is gone
off to the garden to root in the earth
burying his ears with the carrots,
to hide the sound of his girl child’s car
spattering rocks as it rolls away
over the riverbed road.

the mother watches each departure
round the bend
as taught by her mother
for a last smile, wave, glimpse
and turns back to home
to try and remember
who she was before they came...

and to remember
the bedrooms of her children,
once across a hall way,
still only separated
by corridors of breath.

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