Pleiades: Literature in Context

A chimney swift         skims with its beakthen its body this merging of waterand light, leaves

                 a cloud of soot in the lake.

I ask dad whyI can't have candy.           Why that boyis brown. Why grass shivers in the wind,why the wind moves but is bodiless. Dad, dad…

Scatter your rhythms in the bog,young mud puppies.       You!Go tickle the beard of a jellyfish,I don't have time for this—

Water stirs.In everyone. In me.In everyone in me. What happenswhen the moth's wings shove its breathagainst goldenrod.

Dad has a badge, a big silver badge,heavy in my hand. I'd like to be dad,dad and his badge and his gun, his gun,his little silver bullets.

Towers collapsing in on themselves.                       A little obelisk in a big cemetery.

Capillaries reachtoward touch.            Limbssift through dreams. Flesh, flesh. This prison [End Page 245]

of acanthus flutings. My fatherthe tree coaxed me back, loved meas his roots          love the dirt. To havebread and breath keeps us tethered

to the whipping post.           What arethese feelings from under my toenails. Whydoes the dog speak with his tail.

          For the first time I am disappointed in my father.

He came homecrying         I didn't know he could cry,dad, with his badge and his gun,

wearing a cloud of dust, dustof fathers, the fathers that didn't come home.

So much dust even night                                could not wash him. [End Page 246]