Mother and Son, Kazakhstan

Men planted mushrooms in our sky,
she says, with much white boiling
of thunder-and seeds, many seeds
that rained down here and here and here
and, after time, grew up into children.

This one, she says, her sleeves rolled
elbow-high for the work of holding him.

Watch the wrinkled linen of her face
and know the work is hard. A face
and a face, his a gouge of bone
under skin wrenched tight as an outgrown
shirt, the buttons splayed to breaking.

Men came like fire and left like smoke,
she says, shifting his melon-heavy head.

What he lacks fills her arms
to overflowing, how he mouths a gaping
story over and over, the same nuclear
vowel rolling out only to curve back in.

Note her red kerchief, the snowdrift
in her hair. If you can, watch his eyes
like dark searchlights crossing, crossing.
This is a test. This is only a test.