This is how I began: a delicacy
to my mother, a scallop rocking in
her shell, one in thousands of my father’s spawn.

In a rowboat, on a lake, the self-actualized man rested,
both oars drawn in, on his lap. The class, in rows, watched
as our high school health teacher held him up,

Above us, on the second floor, my mother’s
footsteps creaking fall. When we die, that’s it.
He looks heavenwards: what’s up with dinner?

The high-pressure system followed us
from our apartment and out to where
the houses, scattered on the hills and set apart,

Of course it was animus projection
or neurosis or even a psychotic
episode. It was codependence and

I was in the third seat of the station
    wagon and facing backward
when my mother veered

God appeared to Dante as a cloud.
Dante had been lying on the ground

In paling sixth-hour light the woman cups
one azure tile fragment as if asking
of its brokenness a sign. The bright

The way had become unbearably slow, progress
imperceptible. Even his hunger had become
less, little more than a poorly remembered myth

After the TV crews packed up
the doctors in charge
got bored quick—Find a needle