WITH APOLOGIES TO DR. WILLIAMS

 

So much depends upon

the stuffed mouse,

frayed and

covered in cat spit,

hidden within a blue

running shoe

at the start of day.

SITTING WITH THE SICK CAT

 

We are up early, neither of us having rested

much during the night -- up and down

like sleepwalkers -- the neighbors yet to stir,

the first sunrise of autumn yet to break through

the chill-dark distance of the window.

The weather channel on the television plays

softly some French music from another century,

while I glance occasionally at the shifting patterns

of colors and light on the screen, the familiar

outlines of our state, country, then world,

then only the endless turn of borderless sky.

My daughter sleeps, safe and sound,

in the next room, growing taller and stronger

by the hour. But this small creature, having become

the center of her young life, struggles

to find the simplest comfort, circling my lap,

purring, wheezing, nodding off, letting

out a throaty exclamation that is part pain,

part surprise at the very insistence of it.

For the moment, this is our entire universe,

the hum and hush of it, the secrets

and complexities of its motion, the hot

pinpricks of starlight that pierce through flesh,

our common desire to understand.

There is not much I can do beyond this,

a feeling that as a father I am long familiar with,

but stubbornly refuse to get used to.

Our weariness is our common song this morning,

our breathing a shared language welcoming --

or at least acknowledging -- whatever

this uncertain day may bring.

SENSITIVE

 

I have never wanted for you, dearest daughter,

to be anything other than the beautiful and sensitive

soul you have always been, collecting oak seeds

to watch them spin back down to earth,

those long-stemmed dandelions bent over, as if in prayer,

deciphering the forms of strange new animals

among the clouds, where the ancestors sleep,

faces smiling back from the most ordinary of stone.

I have admired, as an outsider, the special language

you share with birds and trees, how the cats

in the neighborhood all come to you, unafraid,

knowing you already, and how you mourned deeply

the death of your beta fish, the one you called

your sister and confided your worries to.

I have heard you choosing each word for a poem

or song, tapping them against the roof

of your mouth, letting the new sounds settle,

until they filled your ears as perfectly as the silence,

watched you conduct, with arms gently waving,

a string concerto constructed in your mind;

and when bullies have thrown their sharpened words

like so many stones, I have sat within your sorrow,

unable to offer an answer as to why some, young

or old, simply enjoy the act of causing harm.

These are the times when I want nothing more than to

protect you from the inclement elements of self,

the ever-shifting atmosphere of your inner world

overwhelming you, to close, temporarily, the windows

against the sudden rain of summer, until the sun

again finds its way, small enough to tuck into

your pocket like a coin, thin and hot to the touch,

rubbed smooth at the center, reflecting.

THE FAWN

 

Walking to work through the half-dark soot of early morning, chemicals still clinging to the damp air, I am startled by the motionless gaze of a young deer, peering through the cemetery's black iron fence, solitary, unimpressed and unafraid by my presence. White mist, like the small splashes along her ribs, hovers around her. For the past two nights, whole blocks of this street have gone up in flames, set off by protestors or outside agitators, blackened brick and the empty easels of storefronts now waiting for whatever sunlight can break through. And on the opposite side of the street, this thin-legged beauty nibbles calmly at the grass and flowers, as if saying plainly, "This land was here long before you and your dead arrived." Having satisfied her belly and curiosity, she is gone seemingly in the flash of a single leap, an agility reserved for the eternally hunted. While I continue on, the interloper in this scene, my own awkward frame lumbering along, moving further and further out of view.