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Mother and Child, Deerfield, Massachusetts, 1785
by William Doreski

The raw summer light refines
the cruelty of slate until
the round carved faces of mother

and infant grimace in accord
with a long-drawn note of cicada.
An unknown craftsman with primal

and decisive skill has hammered
a portrait of Mary Harvey
and still-birth coffined together

with heads and shoulders protruding
from a canoe-shaped container.
The child already looks jaded

while the straight line of Mary’s mouth
has serrated with erosion,
giving her a post-dental air.

Both effigies offer noses
drooping like scraps of garden hose;
but the eyes differ, the mother

focused through hole-punched pupils
while the child has shuttered its gaze
against every possible sin.

The glare feels almost hot enough
to launch this little casket
like a space ship into a blue

that no matter how we map it
with our optics and our radar
remains the one true color of faith.