The Calm

come and let us sit beneath the plum,
curl our toes in the absinthian blades
and bend our heads to the busy work of being boys.

in the middle distance my sister kicks her legs and screams,
her sweaty fingers taking orange from the oxidizing chain,
she scribes redundant arcs:
toes pointed
eyes tight shut.
she is now across the universe,
lost beneath the tail of the sun.