New England Review

My father scrapes zebra mussels        from the hull of his boat.                They're invasive, but my heart torques

                when he splits the seam        with a fingernail, feeds fleshto a frenzied family of ducks.

Empty shells butterfly-wing        the shore. Last year, the mussels                clogged a water intake pipe

                and the faucet gasped; this year,        I'm home to count the monarchs.I spend my days tangled in coneflowers,

thinking of the caterpillars I reared        as a girl. Damp and uncertain                they emerged from cocoons and flew

                south. Instinct propelling        them toward a copse of firs,the womb of the only mother

they know. Zebra mussels,        male and female, release eggs                and sperm into the water.

                When they meet, the larva forms        and drifts away without consideringthe questions of lineage. [End Page 76]

My mother wants to know          if I'll have a baby and will I raise her                  here? She's become obsessed

                  with family history.          Swabbing her mouth,spreading photos linearly

on the dining room table,          she is trying to trace a path back.                  My mother was born in Capricorn. Stubborn,

                  she clings to a December air          that tastes of pine and festive wine.Through the window, she sees a field

of soybeans crippled by heat,          says, they just need space to grow.                  She tells me of a shuttered amusement park

                  in Berlin where weeds overtook rides.          Tendrils grasped roller coaster tracks.What is absence, but space to stretch?

The mussel pile grows at my father's feet.          Here by the river poisoned with Roundup                  and flushed Oxy, I wish to possess

                  his ruthlessness. To kill, to cull whatever          destroys us. Quietly, like a weakness,he says, sometimes I think I see your sister

in the water, but when I look again          it's just me. All my dead                  come to me this way.

                  I say nothing and blame the heat.          When the monarchs return,it'll be too warm for them to spawn. [End Page 77]

Many will die over Texas, wings        fracturing like roasted basil leaves.                When they feel the familiar tug, the urge

                to return, do they know it will kill them?        Part goat, part fish, Capricorn uses her hoovesto drag her tail to the water, though she's lost

her gills. At supper, my mother and father        talk of rain, this drought-filled summer,                how it sounds impatient, fingers tapping on a table. [End Page 78]