Wake
One day now since my father last tried to speak,
since the outer provinces of his body shut
down like small cities when the power goes,
just the enormity of starlight to guide them
on their cold journey into dawn. I am writing
at the edge of the other half of life, the part
without my father in it; I feel the strange
sure pull of the earth I walk here,
the polish of the grass, the distance between me
and my students who look up and wait
for my first questions, knowing so little
of my life, just as I know so little of theirs,
only a poem at a time to hold us together
like children before a fire in the woods.
These months I have heard him steadily
fading in my telephone, his breath gone
short, just the occasional brush of wind
and language, here and there an angry stutter
and release, the little sighs that resign themselves
to his own deep and smoldering basin,
his own coastal reaches tossing in their tides.
The living too leave their ghosts behind.
And his, clearly, always the first to rise.
Somewhere a fork beats a metal bowl;
a strip of bacon crackles like paper at Christmas.
These days moving from room to room
I feel the shadow of this house begin
to lengthen, to feed the other pools of dark.
It’s a mystery still, how vast the valley
inside a body. Blood. It’s what you hear
when you cover your ears, that far surf
where life first sprouted its legs and crawled
ashore to dry its tail in the morning sun.
It’s what sparks beneath a nurse’s mercy,
a red gem brightening in a sting of air.
It’s what calls you to a father’s ragged breathing.
Somewhere a lung fills with water.
Somewhere a great and weary muscle
beats the tender drum of the sky.
It’s the father who knocks on the door
at daybreak, the knock that says, it’s time
son, rise and shine, it’s time to go, it’s time.
