Father
Mckenzie
Turk’s head teased my shadow free
Save for a breath, shadowed by another
Early last evening along the arroyo
Our separations minute yet edging
Toward the clement lip, collecting
Like the thundereggs
I keep in a jar by the door
God long since drifted away
On the high desert wind that drew
The both of us here and rifled the pages
Of the Book Of Common Prayer.
A sodden wind arrived from home, a tang of salt
a churchyard hush, low plaint of cello’s
casting about these adobe walls
for a way inside, my dulcet words
come back to claim their hollow sound and mouth
the things I’d left unsaid.
An old man sits darning his socks
In the night when there’s nobody there
Taking a moment to cross
The room and crack the door
To the gathering stars in the dark desert sky.
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