A Study in Eventuality

Funny, isn’t it, how hard to describe
a good man? In the shower, I let
the water run hot as my blood filtering
a mirror of loss. The messenger arrived
flustered as feathers falling to the place
where feathers go to find each other. Who
is the man who makes you remark, “I have
been lucky”? How does the faucet instruct
forgiveness? Our voices spiral to meet
with too much space between. My cuticles
shine like chrome under the moment’s remains.
A demand for nakedness pools somewhere
down the drain. For what we’ve been able to
let go, and know it happens to us all. 

 

Related Poems

Living Room

God sees me. I see you. You’re just like me.
       This is the cul-de-sac I’ve longed to live on.
Pure-white and dormered houses sit handsomely

along the slate-roofed, yew-lined neighborhood.
       Past there is where my daughters walk to school,
across the common rounded by a wood.

And in my great room, a modest TV
     informs me how the earth is grown so small,
ringed in spice routes of connectivity.

My father lived and died in his same chair
       and kept it to one beer. There’s good in that.
Who could look down upon, or even dare

to question, what he managed out of life?
       Age makes us foolish. Still, he had a house,
a patch of grass and room to breathe, a wife.

It’s my house now, and I do as I please.
       I bless his name. I edge the yard, plant greens.
Our girls swing on the porch in a coming breeze.
 

Cruel Cogito

How joyous!, 
passing this time alone 
with your father, how bright his golden laugh 
which drew you to laugh yourself uncontrolled, 
how sweet the happy hour oysters you two pry and eat, 
piling wobbling shells that glisten on the table
while the pianist plays by the kitchen doors. 
You find yourself reminded of what you wrote 
in the eulogy: that you two would still possess 
a relationship even though 
he was dead, that you could still 
go and speak with him 
when you dreamed

and so you see the seat opposite from you seats no one.

please advise stop [I might travel his death a creaking and swaying beneath me stop]

I might travel his death a creaking and swaying beneath me stop
there are static expressions freed now and passing along the walls stop
an object isn’t what is hidden but what smiles out from the hiding please

with only the slightest effort I might abandon every father stop
or read them all cover to cover please
eyes turn like the telling of stories first inward then out stop

the next page wasn't the kind of listening I wanted but it was all I was offered stop
to reveal as in the Latin re- plus velum meaning veil stop
the thought of him still everywhere only a new place to hide please advise