happy father's day

Jerome K.
1933-1996

By your workbench in the basement, I found
your navy blue hooded sweatshirt with its holes
and white paint stains, and I don’t know how
you fit into it; the sleeves are so short my wrists
are exposed and cold. I remember a version of your face,
from pictures, and now your clothes with no body
wanting to keep going, to push along through
the remembered rooms, as if your ghost could uncoil
the tight aching in my chest, as if you could say
don’t dream of saving me, as if you could be saved any longer.

-- from Never

the archer

The sky was praying to itself in
the glimmering silk of that May night,
sky full of lions and cranes, archers

and doves, all burning the psalms
with no need of God, and I thought:
all this I love will outlive me,

and beside you on the river path I felt
the ache in your slight body as you watched
the stars flash and haze in the prairie

blackness, an ache relentless and jubilant
as if you had touched a new lover: how good that you put
the night on to wear, and I wanted

the stars to be feverish fistfuls of poems
to you, kisses on your flushed eyelids,
the honeyed blur of light flooding

from a screen door you’re approaching
that’s home to you. Nights like these
you know what life is for. You don’t

need to translate the exact point
that the archer’s aiming at, my love.
The arrow’s flight has already made me

silver, made me shimmer like the rain
that soaks you, inconsolable, the
storms you wish would calm so you

could see yourself reflected again
in the endlessness of the shining sky --
hoping to be, this time, the one

unharmed, serene figure in your life
that only wants more life, however
stranded you feel, however unmoored.