Piano Love Ballad (For Mom)

The mother’s foot
squashed a rat eating corn
on the basement stairs.

Nobody ever told her
the groundwater was poisoned
that she pushed between the lips
of her fat-headed colicky baby

or that the spit-rashed boy
who tore off his clothes
would grow up like a tree trunk
and have hair that shines
in the late
October sun.

And that before she knows it
his hair has filaments
of gray
and he has burrowed himself
deep into the lakebottom sand
to wait for whatever flood comes