We

Joshua Bennett

The money of  the mind is attention, maybe.
Which is not, initially, where I thought I’d begin,
but we’re already here now, using the language
of care and economy, though God-talk was truly
my first way in. Sustained attention is how we approach
a flesh and blood experience of the Divine I say to the
therapist nodding her head, only moments after
we disagree over whether her dress is coral or yellow
-based red, as opposed, of course, to a blue-based
red, like the square on her tartan scarf. My jacket
is the color of snow on television. My eyes
are as brown as my father’s when he lifted a stranger
off the ground he saw through the driver’s side window
beating a woman on Broadway. I am almost the age now
he was then, and am still studying the difference between
what a man proclaims in speech and what he says with his
body. Tomorrow marks another year on Earth for his third
son, and he is a father now, with a boy he is trying to teach
the benefits of apprehension. Who instead prefers to walk
on his hands, leap from the playground slide, climb
on countertops to watch TV from another room entirely.
Where does my influence, my aspiration, end and the child
begin? Who refashions the cosmos with his laughter.