a lifetime past long after a spoonful of Mary Poppins’s sugar

by Irene

We stayed within the hedgerows,
and watched, as your mother,
in a sarong, fried ham
while I tried to figure out
her sooty Malay.

One night you bought movie tickets
for all, when the stars
had come out, and on that aisle
Mary Poppins flew up in the air
with an English parasol.

Life was promising,
in small doses, desire contained
within a wall, with a Balinese woman
whose bare breasts in a painting
meant nothing at all.

Still, it was comfort food
like ginger biscuits that repeat,
as you grew ravenous
in your mother’s cooking,
tipping the scales that concealed
from prying eyes.

You never once moved,
even after your mother grew sick,
sweet juices dripping diabetic.
You stayed, within those parameters
of work, and the movies,
that kept you falling off
the primordial escarpment.

A lifetime past long after
a spoonful of Mary Poppins’s sugar,
after those astronauts had landed
on the moon, in a scratchy recording
we had watched, peering up
on your TV’s moon face.

The news of your early passing
made me skulk, poring over
lonely travel brochures,
to squeeze out sap from that same tree
we had sat under, milking the stars,
watching the moon, swinging
our feet above those roots,
in clawed soil, but whose branches
had inched far and away
to the desirable sun.

Process notes: In which there are gangly details of setting, somewhat. Some zooming in and out, maybe, though not on the Interstate 10, for Margo’s wonderful series of place prompts. In which a tree figures, though I’m not saying why.