When you are seven years old,

lying in the back of a station wagon

while your parents play night tennis;

when the knowledge that you are going

to die one day comes through

the rallies, players’ voices,

and songs from a dashboard radio

left on like an audible night light;

you listen hard to the faultless

workings of your life: your heartbeat

mufled under a blanket; your breath,

painting cone-shaped plumes on the glass.

You trade sleep for the ache

of a nameless concept, and feel

the margins of your days begin to close.

You are not prepared for this.

You leave the car and look beyond

the capped, swinging court lights,

blurred by an attendant rain of moths

and flying ants, and you search

the sky for meaning. Linking stars

and smears of low, transparent cloud,

you find a wound in the side

of an overripe fig; a lizard,

its position on a stone betrayed

only when it blinks. But then

a tennis ball clears the fence,

a player laughs, and your parents return,

smelling of sweat and cigarettes.

When they ask why you’re up so late;

what you’re doing outside the car;

you’ve not the words for what you know.

On the way home, you lie down

and stare at the backs of their heads,

which are dark, then silver

in the lights of an overtaking lorry.

Your father turns the radio off.

Your mother turns to look at him.

They do not speak. You touch yourself

under the blanket, carefully,

and forget about death for awhile.

When the backs of their heads

flare again, you promise yourself

you’ll remember that moment;

and you do, thirtytwo years later,

sitting up in bed, when your wife’s face

is lit by a car pulling into the drive.

In the dark again, you sense her

glance at you. The glance returned,

you ask if she remembers

how old she was, or what she was doing

when her first thoughts of death arrived.

When she doesn’t answer, you say

Star, fig, lizard, and wait for the lights

of another car to print

the shadows of your heads on the wall