On the day after the shivering Jews
weep at God. February’s wormy grass
stomped on by their shovels, digging down past
him, burying us both, getting us confused.
My mother’s tongue in a knot on a word
I typed at the dinner table for her.
Then my turn. I adjust my father, slur
across the bad years. No mourner here’s heard
how I wrote this tribute: three days ago
I iced the shower water to blue-lipped
and knew that he would die. It made me trip
and twist into the bath curtains. Out flowed
the little I knew in him. Only then
could my father’s fatherhood ink my pen.
