Every twelve years, Jove welcomes us
with swirls of copper blue and barium green,
jet-streams of oxygen spun like pinwheels
or a crystal ball lowered into low-hanging
helium at a drab new year’s party, our stores
of hydrogen pea-toplum pellets better used
for sowing pak choi or water spinach in
semi-suspended soil. Today, he is a dynamo
of swirled memory, of fire-bursts back on Earth,
Sunday strolls along the Marina Bay boardwalk
as strontium red and shot silver explode off
the glass scales of skyscrapers, Pa pointing
out make-belief dragons breathing white-hot
magnesium across humid skies, Ma sheltering
our tiny heads with translucent army ponchos
as pyrotechnic stars fall on already fragile dreams
or Jie bursting forth like a four-armed spiraled
galaxy of her own design, as a portrait of our family
imprints itself amongst the iridescent stars.