He Could Have Been Sleeping
There is a hum beneath our layer of the world,
sly as a vent turning on in the night,
unbroken and low.
-
Mother sometimes pushes my head down
so my ear can almost meet that sound at the thin
divide. But she does not know
-
there is so much earth between this place
and the other. There is so much silence
and movement. So much fire
-
underneath even the hum, and under the fire,
a red blanket with a child wrapped
neatly inside.
-
Underneath that I don’t know. I had to stop there
and scratch the child’s back and sing him
a lullaby. He did not move.
