When I was a kid, I looked through piles of burnt garbage
for empty perfume bottles. This is the tinkling of the glass.
Every morning my mother gently reminds her canaries
to pay for their food. This is that and the canaries and also
the soft sound of my mother’s sewing machine when I
was twenty-three and found myself living back home. Little
bee on a metal coil on the roof of a small wooden house
that my niece pulls back and then lets fly. The little house
and the hooves of my nephew’s plastic horse on the living
room glass. Rustle of my leather vest that is not a cowboy vest.
Gunsmoke on tv and the dry fields and the voices of the actors
who are all long gone. My father had a strong, joyful voice
and a funny way of saying golly! With a long pause
between the syllables. This is my dad saying gol-
ly! and the hooves of my nephew’s plastic horse on the living.