The basement garden of the row house we rent
Hampstead London 1975
four doors down Parliament Hill from Tanza Road
The landlord’s wife tells us how she and Colonel Woody
recline in lawn chairs on the roof
watch the Jerries bomb central London
outside the kitchen’s French doors
St Anne’s Church bells peal from Highgate
across the Heath’s brown grassy fell
March 30 leaps the garden’s mortared brick walls
the eternal present of communion.

The 900 square foot attached condo
10×10 front yard of bulldozed dirt
I dig a 1½ foot deep square pit scraped flat
arrange a large river stone and one small
together on its 4-inch floor white pea gravel
with metal leaf rake stroke lines
calm sea ripples around jutting islands
1977 my daughter and me
枯山水
a Japanese Zen dry rock garden
along the surrounding shelf of clay
Chrysler Imperials catch California’s sun midday.

I watch a mouse caught by barn cat feign death
jump suddenly at the cat’s face
startled
she reflexively releases the rodent
which scurries to nearest shelter
a half-inch space between two floor mats.
In evening’s darkness it escapes,
would my fate too be evaded so.

Nana maintains the mansion and its garden atop Lee Mountain
a semicircular heated 100-foot greenhouse
runs below the front terrace stone wall
bulbs buried in fall wait for April
flowers grow sheltered in snowstorms
provide cut blossoms for vases in library and dining rooms
and the game room with the polar bear rug.
An infant I pull out its tusk-huge teeth.

Professional photos of family at Lucknow
farewell gathering
father mother and me pose on the lawn
he in his crisp brown Army uniform
at boot camp he writes to his mother
no one believes the mansion and estate are real
deploys to the Italian front
Fifth Army advances toward the Po River
in a foxhole he and his friend Pikey dig
in the dark wait
under artillery barrage eat K-rations they hate.

Mother and I are left alone
she throws away his letters.

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