“Cartography” and “Front Row”

For fourteen nights

Unnerved and trembling

We place him in an unfamiliar bed

As alien as we are to this white-blond Asian boy,

Our sudden son

His scalp razored bald

Tenderly, we wonder, by his grieving birth-mother

Or savagely at a knowing orphanage

In a place that would cast him to the street

Seven thousand miles removed

From the room where he lies now

Staring at two strangers tucking him under a comforter

Printed with primary colors he cannot yet name

Whispering reassurance in incomprehensible foreign syllables

Calling him by a name he does not yet know is his

Each night we listen acutely

And we hear him instantly

When he scrambles from the bed

The muted thud when his body,

Underweight, almost hollow

Drops to the floor

Curling sideways on the rug to sleep

As if it were the flimsy futon left so far behind

It is a beckoning that startles her into action

As she leaps up and hurtles to him immediately

His ib-yang eomeoni, his new mother

Who has loved him fiercely

From the time we first saw

That grainy black and white photo they sent,

His fingers clamped to the sides of an office chair

Where he sat clawing for purchase at smooth black leather,

Dressed in dungaree coveralls,

Girl’s shoes, a necklace at his throat,

The letters and numbers of his ID tag

Scrawled on a rectangle of thin white cardboard

Taped flimsily to his left knee

Something in the set of his mouth and eyes

That we could not distinguish

Fear, perhaps, or a ragged uncertainty

She lies on the floor beside him

And when she turns to him

He is already staring at her

His fingertips reaching out toward her face

Slowly, gossamer as pea tendrils

They graze her lips at first

His touch the barest tangent

As he feels their warmth and traces their shape

And then he begins mapping her,

The contours of her cheeks,

The sloped angles of her nose,

The way his finger fits in the space behind her earlobes

She knows better than to reach for his hand

Or do anything but breathe

When his fingers near the lashes of her right eye

She closes it down on the tears brimming there

Until he breaks their fragile surface tension,

Wipes the unchecked wetness aside

Moves to her eyelids,

And then begins again

It is my job each night, when he falls asleep

Only to lift him from the floor

And deposit him back under the bedcovers

But sometimes I stay

Driven, perhaps, by nothing more than primal instinct

Waiting for the moment he might awaken

At midnight or 4 AM

Sit up to scan the room

In the dim yellow shadows the nightlight casts

Then settle himself back down

And tug the covers to his neck

Perhaps he will see me, backlit, silhouetted

In the moonlight spilling in from the edges of his window shade

Watching him raise his arm,

His fingers fluttering,

A symphony of movement

In the air above his head

As he sculpts the atlas of her face there again and again

Just before his eyelids drift shut

And he imagines, before sleep comes,

Her hazel eyes,

Their steady gaze, hovering and assured,

Haven, sanctuary, anchorage

It was only here, Saturday afternoons

in the front row of the St. George Theatre

that my father uncoiled like a time-lapse flower

and for two or three hours became my dad again.

Beneath the swollen images of cowboys,

Godzilla, invaders from Mars,

the screaming sound and light,

off came his hat, his tie:

his hair fell back, unkempt,

our necks craned skyward as if watching

our dreams cross by,

their contrails thick with possibilities.

It did not matter that he slapped his knee,

guffawed, spilled popcorn,

guzzled Coke and left his chin unwiped;

and when he cried out and clapped and

threw his arms around me,

it was as if it were he up there on the screen,

playing to the audience behind us,

casting his shadow of triumph

into the projector’s beams of swirling smoke.

Driving home,

his fingers gripped the wheel dead-white,

laughter gave way to silence,

he straightened his tie, hunched over,

grew smaller in the driveway.

“How was the film?” my mother stared, arms folded,

taking his hat at the door.

“The kids liked it” he swallowed, brushed past,

turned silently and winked

while I bit back conspiracy,

already thinking ahead to next week,

the seats so hard

I would be sore for two days,

Episode XIV,

my father unfurled, flying again

in his own sweet rite of spring

beneath the screen where other actors

assumed their careful fictions,

where he released his own