"Just a Normal Family"
April 1, 2008 -- Justice Marshall McComb, 82, did not contest his wife’s petition to be named conservator of his estate after she told the court her husband is ‘obsessed with the moon. He gets quite excited about it . . . He enjoys it, but it’s not a normal enjoyment of the moon.’ ”
I catch Mother at odd times
rubbing pearls against her teeth.
She prefers an opera length string, likes
the sound of a man crying. Vesti, la giubba!
Dad's robes rake the stairs, as he descends
into the dark of his moon-striped room.
He wraps himself in the reasoning of his past
opinions but his face pales above his black
shoulders. Why is it the stranded always
look so stricken?
I can’t remember a time when their nacre
palms weren’t a bivalve clasp tightly
closed around the irritant they nurtured
between them, growing a pearl
of enormous dimension. It is right
that Dad counts the moon’s days as they swell
like a sentence passed on the innocent. He’s trying
to rehear his own case, with the same evidence.
But it always comes down to this. Mother
gets to make her rebuttal now; opens her mouth
and tongues the luminous last word past
her lips, rubs it against her teeth.
She finds it flawless; like the moon
that hovers above them, a hanging judge.
© 2008 sue kay
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