Every so often mother
gets riverish, diversionary,
drops her day's intricates the moment

a tributary comes by, & if it looks
in the least baptismal- sparkling
up after her spotty soul's dirt raunch-
she'll lean over to tease it & dabble
gratuities in its humiliation & grief.

She thinks it ought to rise after her.
She thinks it has arrived this far
& ought to seep up the shabby grass to pursue her,
hurl itself to spatter her blouse's ruffled

bosom through to her skin & through her
skin to soak her more essentially,
gush over her true part. Time she'd swing me too
by my arms' length to kick it & splash heels bright,

but what water then
or ever wanted a thing to do with me? & it merely
wrinkled me this old. Advises she, plucking her way along
wooden clothespins, it likes to observe the delicacies.