the door mashes hot mint leaves

going out to the swimming pool

of this house with its back

to Rattlesnake Bayou

where my son yells his count

of two hundred white &

orangey-pink cattle egrets

& I picture the "knees" of

the trees in the cypress swamp

.

& how my brother Bill's

mother's cousin's daughter

(whom I met at his funeral)

keeps hugging & feeding

& telling & showing &

giving us things & how I

crossed this state alone on a

bus once thirty years ago

not knowing I had a brother

.

-Penny Callan Partridge

.

"...it's my latest,"says Penny in the note that accompanies this lyrical poem. "I think my next book will be called Pandora's Hope." An adult adoptee, Penny is the author of An Adoptee's Dreams.

Sept-Oct 1996