Dominic

fruit of a summer seed - cricket spawn - the heat on the day side of a double pane - I conceived you in the cold citrus of a warehouse, striding between the boxes thinking your mother's name - you were conceived in the cold sour of a wine cellar, then the raucous disco in a blurry wine tasting bus - impregnated with the brush of fingertips under an ocean of chirps and acrylic blue - come to think you may have been conceived some time during a behind-the-barn embrace on a shared liter of red, the stork conjured with some smirking boy's shoulder massage - or you were conceived after your mother went away and a million of you were born: red-faced, pillowy, arms beating the air, crying out some version of your mother's name in an epic baroque nativity - nameless you reached milestones under the proud glitter of her eyes: you recited the bard in front of the PTA, drifted off to earn your degree, wore mint scrubs in residency, wrote quartets, danced in troupes - nameless you grew, and lived, and left me behind as the Earth rotated with the pulse of a fast-motion satellite orbit: moon, sun, night, day, night day night day night day. I forgot you until you were born, Dominic, when I learned your name.