Parallel Bloodlines

Your mum with nails
the colour of crystals.
My dad, hunkering down 
with his second family up north.

Your mum in the farmhouse 
with two Siamese kittens.
My dad with never shall meet
on repeat.

Your mum in the yard 
with a hen and six chicks.
My dad sneaking my dead 
budgie out back in a box.

Your mum with one half 
of a double helix.
My dad with the other.

You, with a foghorn 
up in the hills.
Me, homing in 
through the dust.

You, your mother’s daughter.
Me, my father’s.

And then that battered silver thimble 
your mum found in her hayfield, 
how she trimmed it into a ring
years before I showed up.

They’re not even hunting,
she tells her dogs of us,
just following a trail.