In any case, by the time I realized I hadn’t spoken to my father 
           for many, many years, I was distracted. It was snowing

and I was stuck on page 157 of a biography of Casanova 
           who may have slept with multitudes, but lost 

a fortune investing in a silk factory. I dreamed 
           about that story. I maintained my silence

in my cold room there, in Iowa, where industries 
           disappear the fingers and feet of its workers, a cohort

among which my dad might have been counted 
           had his travels led him farther north. Is there hazard pay

in the feeding of America? I have traveled so far from God,  
           my dad might have quoted if he kept diaries.

But who was I kidding? It was not the season of fathers.  
           It was the season of asylum. My uncle told me so. 

While I sat there, in the gauzy twilight of snowy Iowa,  
           he traveled to the edge of Arizona

where he walked himself, hands in pockets, to border patrol. 
           When I was a child, he was also a child. 

He held me down, poured wax on my neck  
           from hot devotional candles. I read in my room 

when Juan Diego bailed on his meeting with the ghost 
           of Mary, she chided him for worrying

about his terminal uncle. Am I not here, she asked, 
           I, who is your sanctuary? I dreamed about that story 

when the snow first began falling in Iowa. I was warmed  
           by the wax that tore like an arrow through my skin.

The ache, the depth, motion and all things 
            that change, am I
Being too broad here, the horizon 
            and the myth
Of infinite regression, of gravity (which was once
            called music)
And passion, like flowers in an electro-

            magnetic field
Which ripple out & spark, the grand illusions
            and the tiny
Ones alike, the indifference of strangers
            to the flight
Of birds, can you hear me now, do you want me
            to be more specific

About outer space, the quantum particles
            that swerve
Along the vertex, where two bodies (heavenly
            or otherwise)
Intersect, the minor tasks and major 
            efforts that lend life
A narrative, a geometric center, the appalling

            beauty of the abstract, 
Can you hear me, should I trace from X to Y
            a downward
Slope, the ache & depth, can I parse the grammar 
            of agony, the wheel
And pulley, the wedge, all our inventions: maps,
            poetry, drones.

The family I’m staying with,  
because my father is working,  
have called their dog Darkness,  
and it is a beautiful name.  
I’ve decided to camp.  
And out here in an old tent  
on the edges of their property,  
Darkness encircles me.  
I burrow my back into the field,  
strangely soft with a grass I don’t  
know the name of. I should know  
the names of grasses, and of trees,  
and of so many things.  
                                    Soon, the thick  
wind loosens into coolness and the light  
begins to dim. As I look up into Darkness,  
the underside of her tongue is spotty  
with inky-on-pink constellations.  

Her body makes me think of my own body,  
my fingertips dry as match heads 
that will light this nameless grass if I’m  
not careful. 
                  Darkness is a good teacher,  
and she guides me to be gentle with myself.  
With a nuzzle of her head into my hand,  
she says, in her way, that I am ok.  
I stroke her so long that the heavy night  
settles, and all that is left is the white blaze  
on her chest. 
          Soon, my eyes, and I, will adjust.  
But for now, I’m suspended,  
in this moment that is the sum  
of all moments.  
The grass, it occurs to me,  
is bluestem. The air is amniotic.  
And I cry a good cry as the great dog  
keeps on guarding me. 

The best ones 
I ever ate I ate

that summer, him dead 
six months, me not yet

forevered again 
to anyone. Tomatoes

the only fever, many- 
chambered, jelly-seeded

—probably slicers, 
nothing rare. Dissected

into the same glass bowl 
night after night for a dinner

date with the pulpy sun 
on its way through

my yard. Fayetteville, 
Arkansas, city of wreckage.

Mozzarella, basil, salt. 
Oil, the August air

humid, nearly liquid. 
One evening I sat

on my back stoop 
in a puddle of light

and knew I could live 
without him, and was. 

I ate the same dinner 
from the same bowl

until the decision 
ceased to be a decision.