RICHARD PARISIO | "HOUSE OF WONDERS"

A young couple brings their baby

home to a mountain cabin

where a perennial spring flows

out of an iron pipe driven into the bedrock.

An aquarium near their woodstove

lulls with water music, holds an axolotl,

a kind of salamander that retains

some larval traits for life. One week

and the baby widens his blue-grey eyes,

locks gazes with his mother as she sings

and nurses him. For this

is a house of wonders. Pink gills

feather the axolotl’s thick dark neck

and flutter in clear water. His species

is named for an Aztec god who guided

the sun through the underworld,

brought back the bones of the dead

from which new life in our world

was created. The axolotl’s job now:

to represent his species, almost gone

from the wild. And the baby, just

arrived from where his ancestors lie?

Mother and baby swim in each other’s eyes.

They are drawing the sun from its well

again. As the moon’s milky disc descends

the sun shows its face on the mountain.

The father takes his son from his sleeping

mother’s arms and the axolotl dances

on delicate feet across

his glass floor and the quiet

brims and burbles. Wordless

the water sings

a new world into being.