A bit of good luck spurts
from the phone—your daughter's swooped
on a coveted job—and you let out a whoop
from your diaphragm, you high-five
the air. It’s been black as hell’s
receiving dock around home; now you’re bathing
under a cascade of light in a Baroque painting:
the sound of your shout wants to ripple out
and touch the far shores, the light 
wants to coat more bowed heads,

but there’s no-one to tell. 
Your confidante has been having a bout 
of very bad luck and you know to call
would be flaunting a red boogie dress in the midst
of a funeral. Oh the grief
of the nicked, tarnished
human soul! Yours, because you want her to thrill
to your luck as if it were her own; 
hers because there’s no way she can.
You wish you could hear 
your mother (dead) shout
Gott Sei Dank! gratifying
the assumption that good luck
belongs to her progeny as surely
as white purses to July. The ripples
fizz out; the light grows dim
as a 40 watt bulb.

So you ring up a cousin
on your mother’s side, 
you haven’t talked to for—what?
a year? —and bless her! 
Brava! That’s
my girl! her voice exclaims,
bouffant with smiles, bolstering
the illusion families are for.

But really, how did she get	
so good about good luck? you’re thinking
as you embark on the inflated
luxury raft, Elect.  It can’t be because 
she’s “family,” since most of the clan excel
at the deflating sneer (when your 
luck grows, there’s less to go 
around)—

I always knew she’d get
ahead! your cousin says in her
larky voice. You practically 
levitate off your seat. Expedited
by winged Fedexim, the news of your luck
speeds past the Powers-that-be—
It’s up to! it’s over the Cherubim
and Seraphim! It’s hurdling
the ninth circle of Paradise! It’s splashing
into the n-e-e-c-t-a-a-r of the r-o-o-o-s-e-
of light! And the rose, wholeheartedly,
nods.

                i
				
Finding us in another
country, news of Death,
sudden, probably an overdose—
a never known second cousin,
now never to be known. His parents’ hearts,
because they do not stop, must
sting their chests:  if only…
we should have… why didn’t…

Among our friends, polite death’s 
just begun to leave his cloned
calling cards, and when he finds
someone at home, it’s not quite the personal,
rude slap of a hostile universe. But this was
“unseasonable,” as the former clergy
would have said, if no less evidence
the young are also “only lent.” 

Why are you shocked? I hear ancient Seneca
whisper. No promises, remember?
	
                ii

Another, then, gone over to the vast
advancing army underground
Vista after vista—massive as the terracotta warriors
of the Emperor Shi—that night they crowd
my dreams. My father shakes his pill-minder
like a war rattle, then cries when it spills
the buttons he put in.  Around the corner
of my childhood, the tailor with the number on his forearm
to whom I brought my mother’s shreds of clothes,
brandishes a letter:  It’s not too late
to make amends with your mother.

I startle again from sleep.  You hold me
closer, and in the generosity
of vacation, murmur: “What would be a good dream?”
And I invite the leaders of those squadrons—mother,
father, uncles, aunts, their friends—to an old-style
soporific feast of fat-glistening brisket,
roast chicken, stuffed “helzel,” “lokshen kugel.” 
“What vegetable? Green beans?”
“Never!” (Only the translucent onion and celery,
the coins of sweet carrot  in the soup).
“Would our little granddaughter be there?” 
“No,” I say, “It’s too scary to cross
the future with the past.” “Our children?” “Yes,
but they’re little.”  “Rye bread?” 
“No, challah!” “Braided? Or section?”
“Braided!”—the last word 
I remember saying.