In a house we were moving into
Mom was with me in a bedroom
I had to get stuff from other rooms, I didn’t have the right things
She was getting up, I was afraid she’d fall
Rehab people came to do exercises with her
One lady said she was from Duwamish, Washington
In the building was a big bar. We are in Houston
A waitress said that hers and my poetry books were finalists for a prize
I sit down at a table with a drink and several people
I look at the book – it has photos from the family tree, sometimes funny juxtapositions with the poems
Looking out of the window of the house we were living in
Dee Dee shows up with two cops in cruisers
The perpetrators have neatly covered the house and yard and all the items around it
And the house of the neighbors as well, all over, with small logs, carefully stacked
A mob of people are watching and talking about this from the street
In a store, buying shoes for mom, with her there with me
I tell the clerk she is dead. He looks doubtful, and confused
The family tree has become a book of poems – a poem for each person
Sometimes the people have written them, sometimes I have written them
I meet with some of the relatives, I don’t know them, and they are nonchalant
About the poems they have written and about sharing them with me

2/9/11