my grippy socks are outside while inside  
the grey tube magnets orbit my head, 
the way I imagine seabirds circle a whale’s  
bubble net. A technician charts my mind’s 

grey furrows and I wander from my body.  
Is this how god would judge me: counting  
to see how long it takes my atoms to diverge 

then align with his magnetic field? Even  
with the machine’s exacting resolution, I don’t believe  
he’d see me. Better to remember watching humpbacks  
navigate and imagine how enskulled magnetite pulls 

them along earth’s magnetic field. Is it that I wanted 
the leviathan to see me, and perhaps god—the way I  
once saw a whale in Resurrection Bay? We were bound

by the light wave reflecting off us, buoyed by oscillating  
waves. Perhaps, there’d only be waves. I don’t need  
to be seen, but I need the whale, the waves, the certainty 
that we exist. Better to remember how I loved 

the corded phone as a teen, loved its tight coils, more elastic  
than they looked. I’d thread my finger through them,  
like stacked rings and bind myself to another’s voice, 
the limits of my romance. I didn’t know a compass

could encircle desire until my love replaced the cords  
with a single shining loop. This machine demands removal.  
Bereft, I remember how I lost myself following raspberries 
through the woods behind our home. I could not find my way.

I called and his voice found mine before we saw each other. 
I called and his voice found me.  

My mother took the bag from its box— 
home to my father’s ashes for thirteen years— 
and poured its heft into a form she made  
on the potter’s wheel—a vase, damp and unfired. 
She pinched the rotating lip, and sealed the clay  
perfectly shut, a technique I haven’t yet mastered.

We planned to launch it like a football at low tide,  
but when we arrived, the beach was lined with people, 
and there was no subtle way for my brother to toss it out past  
the children kneeling in the surf, the surfers awaiting the break. 

To carry my father out, arm above my head, heavy with him— 
or hold him against my chest, side-stroking  
with one hand while the clay disintegrated into the water— 
I wasn’t dressed for it.

Instead, we dropped him in the water by the docks  
by the old Shrimp Shack, all 6’4” of him, 
and I watched the vessel slowly descend, a few bubbles  
emerging as if the last breath left in a dying lung.

We’d lift gin from your mother’s cabinet  
and walk the hallways of Robert Asp Middle  
taking swigs in plain sight from a 20 oz  
Pepsi Clear, your gap tooth flashing  
at teachers we passed, your hands forgetting  
to pass the bottle, screwing and unscrewing  
the cap. After that I moved. We lost track.  
The news was six months old by the time  
I heard. When they don’t say what happened  
you know what happened. We used to catch  
rides from highschoolers out to the Red to jump  
the bridge. Water thick with clay. Red with clay.  
We kept close watch for underwater logs.  
Smoked Menthols. A 40-foot drop into swirls  
of currents. One time you stayed under  
and kicked downstream to trick me. Nervous,  
I stared at the surface for signs. No signs.  
I stumbled down the bank to dive in.  
The moment you were certain you had me  
the valley cracked with your laughter.

The wind has come up  
and now there is a cloud behind the mountain.   
How many times did she tell me the story   
of my birth? The story ended when she’d say,  
and that was the happiest day of my life, and  
I’d feel a little sad because I’d had no child  
and would never have a day like hers. Sometimes,  
I can see the river bottom and its glitter  
of stones. Then a fish leaps in sunlight rippling  
the surface. Sometimes, I listen to the birds,  
our seers, the pileated always laughing. I’ve read  
the dead in dreams are never dead,  
and yes, it is their aliveness that is reassuring,  
their going on even as they leave us here. Just now  
the shadow of wings, and a far-off child’s voice  
shouting  Hey, Mom.

In South Philadelphia the b-ball hoops
in the playgrounds and parks mostly had no nets,
no nets on the rims—they’d been stolen
or ripped down after being torn by leaping teenagers.
When my son was a boy the difference mattered
because he loved basketball, he loved the Sixers,
he loved shooting baskets and there is beautiful satisfaction
when a good shot falls through the net—
“Swish” we said—“Nothin’ but net”—
and so as I moved around town I always noticed
where the hoops had nets
so Nick and I could shoot there.

The difference mattered.  Life should be a certain way
but often the right way becomes unavailable—
the nets disappear—you have to be alert
to find the courts where a perfect shot really does go
swish.  Life has disappointments
but you don’t want your boy to feel that life is
mainly or mostly disappointing
or that the Sixers on TV are absurdly far from his real life—

because he needs to believe
that life allows moments of sublimity—swish—

so even now when Nick is almost forty
wherever I see good intact nets on the rims
I make a mental note for half a second:
Nick and I could play here.
The difference matters.