All summer Father kept us

in the garden shaking

Japanese beetles off the roses

and into a coffee can

filled with rubbing alcohol.

Mother, soaking in the bathtub

answered: God was never

born. He always existed.

I stared into her pink

naked faces. At night tiny ghosts

hovered over my bed insisting

with a quiet drone to be drained

from the gruesome bath.

Deep in the woods away from the garden

I soaked them in rain water

and poured them back into earth.

In morning as I swept the pests

off her leaves, I watched the rose

open carefully each pink face.

I think of god and sleep

a chest of drawers. I run my hand

over wet wood and listen for Mother.

The voice of a scarab

sings from a drawer

which I cannot close or quiet.