Let's make a poem
Start with a bad memory—
your father’s dead blue eyes
stare at the ceiling,
the doctor hovers over him,
stethoscope probing his chest
like a vacuum cleaner,
but there’s nothing left
to retrieve except
spittle on his chin.
Now, a few questions—
why write poems thirty years
about the same event—
Death has enough power?
Why not remember
the bonfire builder,
the Sunday morning pancake chef,
the man at whose feet
dogs worshiped,
the shower resounding his tenor,
I’ll fly away in the morning,
the tenderness of his callused hands?
And your mother’s screams—
crying out to God—
let’s say they were operatic,
mythic—Leda, for instance, or Icarus;
Prometheus and his liver ailment
for sneaking fire to man.
Now picture a little fire grate
in the upstairs bedroom
of your parent’s home,
how your father stoked it,
how the night before his death
they held hands
and poked socked feet
through flannel pajamas,
blue coals sparkling their eyes.
