The Blue Hour

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Here, an oak tree sheds
her acorns each day. Thunk-
thunk, they gather in heaps like shadows
on my new deck. My mother would say
pick them up, roast them, eat them. My mother,

the brave one. Before I flew
to New York, she took me to a temple
nestled in the hill behind banana trees. Unafraid of the street dogs’
persistent sniffing, the wet Delhi wind,
she nuzzled their jaws in her lap and talked to them
like babies.

Done with the gods,
palms in namaste to our chests, we stepped
outside to the descent of a peacock. Look
how blue, the throat, my mother pointed
then returned her palms to her chest,
pressed. Can you imagine carrying

all that weight? The feathers were long,
skirting the fence. A gala gown with its hem
open, flexing forward,
then back. Some nights alone
in my room with the windows shut, I move
through the blue hour,

closing my eyes, gliding
my arms, romancing myself. Slow jazz
in my ears. My mother and I
kept looking at the peacock. Our palms still folded,
warm, waiting for a cry.