[A freckle at her sun’s eye]

A freckle at her sun’s eye in

the windows of the nursery

I will mange, that graceless, through the

frames of saints along the walls

A rapture that I left in her

old garden tub upstairs is

bleeding through her mother’s cupboard

on the dollhouse chairs she kept

And should they plea, should she let

her children see the vanity fair

at last, I will know her from afar

as she spreads blankets on the floor,

and ask something of her savior

whilst the cattails pierce her blouse

[Or a cherub cast in resin]

Or a cherub cast in resin that

the girl who bled in the garden tub

will practice nursing in her sundress

when the doors to the parlor are closed

somewhere in the daylight, leaking through

the windows ’til it peels the moulding clean

Whilst her brothers whine at mother

for the cider in the cupboard—reaching,

unrepentant—spoiled, I said please.

Whilst their father wanders the activity bus

with girls he baptized in the aughts

and asks them, halos in his teeth,

where they find such pretty dresses that,

he hopes, will flatter his daughter’s eyes at service

[Whilst the boys, in their study]

Whilst the boys, in their study, pick

a harvest for their lessons in

the greenhouse, carrying, to their

mothers, baskets of sprouts and

parsnips, I will follow her through the years,

to where their paper mache and cabbages

fell, “Ages past,” she said, “lost in the

rapture of man.”

And whilst the boys

set the table for lunch in the

parlor, I will taste the kind foxglove

with my heart in her teeth, and see,

from the windows of the manor, the lady

in the curtains mouth the name of a saint

Ian Berger is a writer and teacher in Wilson, North Carolina. He is currently studying literature and political science while working in the public school system. In the meantime, when he is not writing poems—that is, often; between visits from kindly muses—he cooks for his partner and collects books.