Silver Father

My father maps the darkened ways to light

Beneath eternal stalactites that hang above the grave

Of man - cartographer of Plato's cave,

Silver-bearded Atlas bearing constellations on his back in spite

Of pain, arms like barrels of wine - and at the world's height

He brews wisdom in a silver chalice like a knave

Living in the sunset of all ages, playing his lyre in the conclave

Of the happy, for the golden, ever golden banquet hall's delight.

My father is a wolf, dragging home

An infected wound he will not lick -

For his cubs might even need the silver foam

Of his saliva, if they are sick.

My father has designs on time no artifact

Can hope to have, unless it be

By imitation of his heart - in lieu

Of this, call down the curtain on his act

And say my father is more strong than me,

And you will see, more silver-light than you.

Thankless Young

In the time before Red Bull my Dad whose sorrow every bleeding day now begets would load up his shitty car with shitty college stuff and make the drive from Cranberry to Chicago with frequent stops for the purpose of forty winks and to stretch his tired appendages and to let his one time only one way only traveling partners with whom he split the cost of gasoline and sandwiches find a way to use the rest stop rest rooms quietly before re-entering Route 80 by way of sad little ramps and rolling on until he reached the campus of the U of Chicago after having braved the Nairobi 500 where they all drive on sparking rims the wrong way, but I had Red Bull and made it without stopping to eat or sleep for 51 hours from PA to CA and that's with sixteen hours through a Nebraska blizzard. Things I learned on this trip: (1) At high altitudes like the Rockies, cars do weird things. (2) Nebraska sucks and can go to hell. (3) Pepperidge Farm Goldfish turn my shit orange.


The point is that I miss my Dad.