We Play Badminton in Midnight Light
In this long green twilit night our shuttlecocks swim into the sky
—pock pock—pock pock—pitched as high up in the air
as our thin arms can bounce them, our joy a slow sailing volley,
our hope that the birdies will rise and not stop rising.
Where in this treed and flowered dark light are our parents?
If we speak, it is to giggle and exult like the ravens around us.
We believe they are in the kitchen washing up
and watching us through the open kitchen-sink window
or they sit like a magazine photo and thumb magazine pages
or they kneel in our bedroom closets arranging shoes and complaining
or they are at the far back of the closets like lost socks themselves
or scuttling invisible mites, or they left while we played, out
the front door and did not ever come back. And we are sending
these white feathered shuttlecocks to them up there.
