Choosing My Conception

My mother at a party in a blue dress
dancing, left-handing a Bacardi and Coke in June
as the house pants through open windows.
Two men in the backyard clutching imaginary
nine irons, miming their swings
for the analytical reflections of the moon.
A woman seven months along in a sunflower
muumuu accepting suggestions for names -- saints
and ballplayers, a candidate promising Camelot --
as hands shadow her belly, a reflex of memory.
Nancy Sinatra on the hi-fi, my mother employing
more hip, closing her eyes and shimmying
against the base line. Everyone floating
a half inch off the floor, the season
a thermal in the blood making them dream
like hawks, making them crave sky. My mother
dancing with the tide of Todd Rawlings,
with his premonitions, the air he's about
to inhabit. They don't care for each other
the way my father worries, watching
from the flagstone fireplace, Betty Thomas
composing an ode to hydrangeas in his right ear.
They don't touch each other or the lyrics,
don't know the room exists, that dishwashers
are on sale and pillbox hats a must. A little
rum, the heat of a woman finally singing
in her natural register, done
with the virginal songs, the doo-wop
tease. If for three minutes you could vanish
into your knees, into the deepest meat
of your brain, the part that thrums
hosanna, the kernel unharrowed by words,
how readily your bliss might be mistaken
for lust. So despite the shame of something
deeper showing, the unhinged self, my father
comes over between songs, lowers
my mother's head to his shoulder
and begins to sway
rigidly, like rust, until her skin
and the blue dress with one strap
almost falling, until her hands
plowing the long muscles of his back,
make him forget he hates to dance,
to douse his body in music. After an hour
of Ray Charles, Dean Martin and the diesel
of Patsy Cline, my parents leave, walk past
their red Valiant, arms vined across
each other's back, to a park where a bronze man
threatens stars with a saber. And for once
my father's able to say what doesn't
make sense but flows, to articulate
something like rhythm, she's able to forget
what he wants for a second, to look away
from his face at the willows shaking their hair
to attract the moon, suddenly they're both
devoted to the echo of a tune, the strap
of a blue dress falling, and soon,
and randomly I will exist.