Paul Rabinowitz, Storm Clouds, 2022 (Artist Website)
Digital film
Courtesy of the artist
A thin gray jacket obscures her hands
as she walks out to the water—
her body diminished
to its gesture by distance and blue
ocean skim. I see my mother’s hair
thrown by wind, feel the retreating waves
drain soft dark pockets from the sand
beneath my feet. The sky curls over us, fragile
as the dome of a robin’s egg. It holds her
bending to look for stones,
bent as she was
to soap her legs when I was a child
and sat on the pearly tile
guarding her shadow
through the blue pane
of the shower door. I asked god
in every way (the small lit orb
of the ceiling lamp) to take from me
what he wanted in exchange
for her protection, and my gaze
was vigilant while she washed her feet—lifting
each, her hand pressed to the steamed glass
for steadiness so I could see
her shape and know she rises
as the ocean does, wrapping
its rippled silver around her soles
so her silhouette stands
on a thin sheet of light—
and she cups something in her hands,
and with my gaze, I hold her shimmering.