DHIMITRI
He was a tall man on the edge of the couch
with a cigarette on his fingers,
eyes and mind thrown several mountains
out the balcony.
He was the distance
between
the life of that smoke
before dissolving in the room
and weather
outside the window
quickly changing: spring,
summer, autumn, wind, wind, wind.
His tapping shoes calmed the whole world
and when we walked the city
he held my little girl hand
tickling my wrist with his little finger
as though trying to remind me
a long, long time into the future
that I had a grandfather
who was not rich
who didn’t have a house, or car
and couldn’t take me to much at all
but he took me around the city
and his hand wrote the streets inside me.
