My Mother Orders a Children's Book
-- by Michael Burkard

All the rain is exhausted from so much falling
My mother orders a chirdren's book to replace the book
which is lost. If the rain cries anymore
I will sell the house and become another one.

In the phantoms of the heart
is the harbor of a youth,
and the night comes on
when love least expects.
A city begins and ends,
a face effaces itself
before any moment is translated.
And the ships rock furiously in the waves.

My mother has climbed a hundred steps
but never these, never this shadow, never this sun,
never this high ending up against love.
Where nothing at all seemed untrue.
Where she believes the house is mine,
fraught with red questions, white sentences,
voices crossing with rain.

This is true: I have never been home.
The name is an infinity of space
I am in, I have never left.
The face tries to leave again,
but it cannot.