open the throat to the parenthetical,
the toasting of goals;
to initiative and hindsight
and all of the joys
of a thriftless childhood:

an echo, perfectly
leveled against cement
tethered to the granite;
against the early bedtimes
that were the envy of
all neighborhood parents
and the bane of two little girls
cosseted in flannel and terrycloth;

echo and underside now
disappeared by waves and
currents, the turning that is
necessary though a philosopher
warned against counting on it;

gone is the grass, wet from
sprinklers and cool sunsets:
the citrus and tulips devised
as gifts before they grew
burdensome and deleterious;

all the conditions and creators
that lobbed noises outside
of where politeness permitted;
to traverse real hills and facades
of mountains; they had been
graded and failed when we
hoisted onto them our assumptions:

they would always be here,
right here where we started;
we would always be here
with them, our toes and
barefoot voices; and all
the marriages too, all
the families; as if they
were incapable of hardening
like tree branches we knew
had to be sabotaged from
the inside and insects;
they broke off, as if
phantom limbs and
gangrene curses,
so no one was to catch
the reciprocal or tend
the coordinates: to the grid
of the carousel-looking
house across the canyon
meant to receive us,
though we could easily see
as our parents warned
that like our echoes,
it was collapsing
and vacant.