—Eavan Boland
One hovers, head bent sharply down—
strains with waiting for the other
pushing up with such force
its whole body seems to rise
into its chest with the thrust, tailfeathers
tapering long and slender below. Swollen
and filling with blood, my son’s new tattoo
of two swallows he says
are his grandparents. Were they like this—
so muscular an ache as they reached
for each other? My son only knew my mother
in perpetual motion, her small, darting
body. Smiling from photos, my father
appears calm, still, but does my son see
what I did, even as a child: the restlessness
he checked for the life he didn’t want
in a gray country he didn’t love? And more—
how it took everything she had
to be always moving toward him.
And for him, to stay in place.
