father

DNR—Or Do

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I can almost taste
the snow—nothing
good ever comes

from that. A late March double
espresso might neutralize
the palate. Might

not. A family
reunion in August resuscitated
to honor my father. I

never went when he was
alive. How can I
go now? August is

the month of grand
gestures, spiritual releases.
August is

the month he left
us. Yes, I told him
he could let go, but

how could I know
what it would be like
to live in a world without

his heart beating
in it? August is the month
when water

falling majesty just
might return.

Six Months

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Another one
passes. Halfway around
without him. The heat

of late summer
was closing in
that morning. Now late winter

hints at thaw
before another day
closes just a little bit

later than the one
before. Still not used to it.

Startled and chilled
by moments of awareness
of nonexistence. Or,

is that it? He exists
in the route I take
each morning to work,

in the choices
I make when I am truly
awake, in the words

I retrieve—sometimes with excruciating
slowness. In the messages
I hear in that February

wind. He’s there
in the backdrop
to an overripe

moon. There propelling
me to imagine the next
full one. Then again—

an infinitesimal speck,
how can I know? And that’s it—

the spiritual collision
he would have me lean into.

Relentless

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Everything echoes
interruption from 5 ½ months
ago. Another trip
to an art museum

suspended. Piles
of new poems stacked
against a stucco
wall unblogged. All walks

come with a hollowed-out
hive halfway
through. If it’s a before

after scenario, this is
the in-progress video
that won’t end.

Five Months

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Half the Sunday
paper on Saturday.
I would leave the business

section folded, unread
for him. All that caution—
still he preferred

The Wall Street Journal. Grilled
salmon with his secret
marinade sauce

in the years
I ate fish. It always came down
to The Run or The Walk—

capital T, capital R, or
capital T, capital W.

The Asbury Park
boardwalk. Trails
in South Mountain Reservation.

The Delaware
and Raritan
Canal State Park.

The Mississippi
riverfront overlooking
Saint Anthony Falls.

The Kinsale
Old Head before
it became a golf course.

From those Kokomo
rural routes to
a nursing home hallway,

so many other roads, trails,
paths, passageways
to his life. If I could begin

today, how many days,
months, years would it take
to map it all? If I can recall

a path a day, I might
make a little bit of progress
the way he wished.

Would Have Been

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Your 36th
sober birthday if
you had lived. I remember

when you told me
you put down
the bottle. I didn’t understand—

my first tipsy
only weeks before. But
that prayer

I now choke on
between “grant me”
and “the serenity”

since you died. That prayer
I thought you wrote
with your second wife. That prayer

I knew had magic
in it—hanging over
the kitchen sink

ready to help
whoever might read it
come clean. That prayer

I pin
to my heart each night
before I sleep. That prayer

enshrines every gift
you, my father,
ever gave away.

Four Months

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The dullness
of this count does not mirror

the flash
of metal that cuts longing

into irregular slices
of grief.

No steady hand
can regulate how

it gets measured, how
another day will fold

open with his absence
now ink

that has set into the fibers—
bleeds and all.

Three Months

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The labor of breathing
without gasping
through these hollowed-out
days. The fear

of never being able
to recite the Serenity Prayer
again because of the way
the throat closes shut

before “grant me”
can escape. Just one more

bear hug, one more laugh
over lost cookies, one more
email exchange, just one
more hand squeezing, one

more simultaneous gazing
at the same full moon
while standing thousands of miles
apart, one more walk

side by side
would not be enough.
I surrender to this
grief and put my trust

in the wind still blowing
from those resilient wings.
Death’s got nothing
on them.

To the Lighthouse and the Jersey Shore

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Less than a month to prepare
for a stretch
of 960 moments
that have lost
their luminescence.

I pick up
a flashlight and laugh
at the minor beam
I try to control. Dream

of a lighthouse
freed of its hurricane
ravaged land guiding me
to a place where he’ll be

walking on reconstructed boards
to the rhythm of the tide,
beckoning me
to catch up to him.

Putting Together with Light

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When I can’t recognize
the taste of my own
name on the tip

of this inherited tongue.
When water terrifies
but is the only way.

When light’s brilliance
before death
takes me by the hand.

When I’ve got no place
else to go,

the rhythm of you
remains—you
big ole’ muddy river.

Mid-October

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And time to put away
the dresses, seal
windows shut, remember
my stupid hat and gloves

and the fastest route
through the largest skyway
network to a view
of the river
where grief can flow.