The mother and father
are the picture of health,
so popular people invite them to everything,
their awards for community service,
hanging on walls white as chalk dust
on the father’s fingers.  

A schoolteacher, he receives red
and green apples from his students
picked from the trees growing in yard
after yard. Mother  

the woman the others come to,  
keeps a teakettle on the stove, dark
red wine in the cellar for times when a little
can calm down everything from distraught
young wives, to elders who’ve just lost
their spouses.  

At night long after the town has shut down
tight as a box, they sit together
at their computer, naked as words
watching image after image of
their neighbors‘
children.