The Father, the Mother, the Son, the Daughter

From The Windjammer in the Forest

The father hanged himself
in place of the pendulum.
The mother is mute.
The daughter is mute.
The son is mute.
All three follow
the father's ticking.

The mother is air.
The father flies through the mother.
The son is one of the crows
on Piazza San Marco in Venice.
The daughter is a carrier pigeon.

The daughter is sweet.
The father eats the daughter.
The mother cuts the father in two
eats one half
and offers the other half to her son.

Ths son is a comma.
The daughter has neither head nor tail.
The mother is a spurred-on egg.
Tail end of words hang
from the father's mouth.

The son is a broken shovel.
So the father is forced
to till the soil
with his long tongue.

The mother follows the example of Christopher Columbus.
She walks on her bare hands
and her bare feet catch
one air-egg after another.
The daughter mends the wear and tear of an echo.

The mother is a gray sky
in which an ink-stained
blotter-father
loiters below far below.
The son is a cloud.
When it rains he pours.
The daughter is a beardless tear.

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