by Patricia Engle

2 a.m. tattoo:  Solemn-eyed, we assemble. 
Nightclothes in jeans tucked, 
laces untied, looking  
and feeling like the night  
lightning split the oak 
and surety gasped.  
Magnificence sputtered  
halos of picnics,  
tire swings & high climbs, 
spilling its will to the tempest. 

The floor-buffer’s hum 
weaves a spell ‘round our stories. 
The babies—in our 40’s—we doze,  
rising and falling on the soothing  
and the wry in our elders’ voices,  
muttering indignities and endorsements  
on the hardships and hoodwinks  
and tightrope morals spun by she  
who was mother & father  
for so long. 

‘Til the stories turn to him, 
vagabond minstrel dad, whose singing 
“ . . . graced the crowned heads of Europe 
and the bald heads of Ireland . . .” 
And the gangster look their photos show, 
the relaxed edge of defiance, love,  
and nothing to lose 
                             (and “angels can fly because they take themselves lightly”1) 
(and how girlishly she speaks of him lately). 

 In St. Mary’s lobby at 6 a.m.  
through the back door of time, left open, 
we tumble cold 
from hale to loss and loss and loss,  
dreaming the word “orphan”  
‘til a certain slant of light  
strikes our timeless tableau with a knowing 
that from this day, 
we do it for them.