Small Scenes without Apology
Remember the daughters.
We keep valuing each swallow. We need him to be still certain, still
angry. His thoughts go again
through. Let him fix on the skin of a question…which one
are you?
We savor
ordinary flickers. No longer his signature: that E—
a double-bellied vessel. We pay others
to dance with him. You could say the cost of removing
the emphatic was comfort. Everyone else in the place is reading
the wind at night. The moon dips
without witness. We moved him in and now
the father sits in the courtyard
taking shade. We omit everything
we know. His crisp calculations of bounty
are butter-scented eggs from the red pan. Over easy and over
again. Breakfast anywhere
you go because day spiders along and Dad
puts his fingers to the eyes on his plate. Murmurs a certain and
we’re back to how small what he conjures
as celebration. Half a sentence
climbs to its end, then he looks down divides it.
When we leave (we will leave) he’ll sit plump
in his green cap. He is content as clouds. All of them
not moving. He is relieved
of a secret. Who am I? he asks
on a day or the opposite. I count a mess
of minutes and breaths
and can’t fix a thing. The clock is completing its dreams.
