When Wednesday’s Visions Come in Color

At the sink washing dishes
I almost believed
I was a mother
of two children playing jax
and looking very old-fashioned.

The boy wore navy shorts
and knee socks pulled up
and the girl kept her hair
in a long braid, tied off
with a red silken bow,
which I must have made, being
Mother.

From the spare room I’d painted
gray to dull the shadows
of winter’s empty trees
came the knocking
of the rubber ball against
the wood floor,
at first slow and serious
then quick, doubling and laughable.

It was a dead indulgence.
A thought like the neighbor’s cat
killing all the rabbits
with their dark and sacred eyes.
Supple-throated and yielding
to the fields that tell us
so many fallow lies.