only your dovish husband
knows how miserly you can be
with the hours past the evening news
you know this call is coming
from the younger woman staying just
down the road her parents remember you
each holiday's eve you give
and receive casseroles you love to smell
her doe-eyed children's just-washed hair
soon after her husband shipped
to a classified location their baby arrived
with those wide and knowing eyes you browse
tonight's images with the volume down
a veiled Afghan bride and mottled children
strewn along the rubble you pick up the phone
It never occurred to me
if Pluto should be considered
a planet. I barely remember
the temper of your sun,
let alone care to decide
if a mouse will outwait the owl,
or how a girl will judge
an approaching vagabond.
It's all too much
detail sometimes,
such drama, even for me;
I have galaxies to spin—
they progress
faster than you know. Yet
through my absences,
you remain so earnest—
believing yourself to be
a favorite child, so sure
a father must be near
and in all things. I nearly believe
such faith can delay
the restarting of time,
that you might follow
the meteor's arc,
willing it to burn away
until, a molten seed,
it crashes through your waiting palm.
to burn impertinence,
compel its populace
to refuge on a raft
in boiling seas. There's reason to
distribute fascinating death
to later be exhumed (mid-scream)
with schadenfreudic joy. Ah,
then where's the use? Romantics
twist tragedy to beautiful:
As ruby rivers take their due,
the bubbling rage congeals and clots,
erects a new black-promise isle
whereon insistence settles in
and treats me like a god.
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