Across, Down

The daily paper's clotted wall of words

Fusing fact and fact, cause and effect

With yesterday's fact, no longer held intact

Unless it was tucked in half and creased in thirds,

Crossword on top. Braced on a crossed knee,

Stocks, cartoons, obits mere depth to write on,

Its chronic hints-stock pun, transparent clue,

Blackbird and sloth and fescue and ossuary

No longer necessary to look up,

Skewed definition easily seen through-

Still held for words whose touch with life was gone,

Still peopled the empty squares, still played their tricks

Of intersection, weaving on his lap

A quilt of language purified of sense,

Irreducible as music or mathematics.

Head bent, mind still, bifocals glittering,

Surveying his princely grid of filled-in blanks,

My father took his verbal stand against

The nameless separation of everything.