The Quick Bruise And Run Of Love By Marjorie Evasco Poem by RIC BASTASA

(for Mary Ann & Marc)
I.
Summer twilight slices into two
Halves of a sweet cantaloupe;
At table, the speckled stargazer
Opens its fragrant petals windward;
At my foot, our old cat dreams.
Nothing here betrays the grace
We speak of at each meal, together
Or alone. Today, while one of us
Sits under the tamarinds,
And another wades the golden river,
I alone sit at table, a mother
Attending to the core of fruit
Cleaving to the knife, the fuchsia
Flower sundered by summer’s heat,
The cat purring its ninth life away.
II.
Yesterday night after dinner, we told
An old story, pausing at a part
We did not love but could not
Gnaw off. It is your hurt fathered
Into child’s shape, vulnerable
To faithlessness. As the story twists
In the telling, you speak of a new-
Born child, whose limbs could break
Or neck snap. were one of you to hold
The tender heels and swing against a wall.
We need to put this story right.
III.
Long, long ago on a fevered night,
A mother sat by her child’s bed,
Damp cloth soothing flame of forehead,
Limbs. in her vigil she vowed
On pain of death, to beg the life
Or health back into those cheeks.
The fever broke, she held her kind
And knew the gods had ears.
Son, Daughter, take this story-child
With care. In the curve of your arms
Your father’s fruit survives the fall,
Becomes your bruised but living grace.