The Pardoning Hour

     Here at my parents’ farm

trumpeting bees scoring in the ears

     of all flowerkind

            chilies and kabocha

      3,400 searing stakes

of  Indian bitter melon

Nkauj Hnub in her hot prison

           bearing witness.

My father emerges from the field

his arms in blooming greens and yellows

      a mutable image

            I never thought possible

my life running in every direction

devoted and never into death.

            My father calls me over.

      There by the roadside farm stand

a young coyote repentantly crossing

into the golden hills of no return

     spilled brain and other wounds

bubbling under the aegis of   Nkauj Hnub.

Tus hma my father tells me

            the losing cousin of a tiger

    once revered

                 in the former country.

At home such tales are revealed to me.

But there is no story for the desperate cry

of  a killdeer locked

            in a small sandstorm

      uninvited and combing away at the foot

of  my father’s lesser garden.

                           No hidden meaning

when it finally breaks at the towering row

      of his Chinese waxy corn

where I await my mother’s song

returning from beyond the Sierra Nevada

            and into the fettered throats

            of his guarding cowbirds

whistling in an alarming rise

                    to keep away the flies.

In verse we scald ourselves

      dream the good dream

paludal in the folded tongue

two half-shadows thanking tus rab liag

      the gift of a curved bone

carving our way back

            to Zos Phab Nab

      thiab Zos Vib Nais

back even further

ntawm Dej Naj Khoom

                      where tus choj lined

            with cadavers smells sweet

            of rice and wild yams

      where the buzzards

            and shadows of B-52s

              are not allowed

            to land.

I steady myself though I am not

my own talisman

      gelid current to napalm eyes.

      In the sweltering interim

my stepmother pulling her body out

            of the rusted wheelbarrow

wearing the skin of a great grandmother

                  one leg over the rim

      the other steeped in noonday ash

my mother’s ballad wicking at her brow

                   tumbling into

           the nearby bed prepared

      just for this moment

bushels of melon leaves

picked for the monthly shipment

to China.

      Kuv niam cov lus

            lost again

traversing again into the earth

unto a most fluid exile

      my stepmother weeping

into the mirage of the hissing coyote.

Here at the farm where we are absent

from dying I give up

            and reenter the valley.

     What more can I see?

Siv Yis braving the mountains

the dust stirring above my feet

      my fist a glowing peach.