Against Blossoms

Why not say I miss my father, face above the oil-stained tools,

medals there behind his shorts, same ties worn year after year,

the news photo, no glasses, so he seems skinned, a sort of owl

surprised at raw flesh? Isn't that a pretty way to put things?

Whiskers faint as my fear at the silk box, his Masonic apron

white as azaleas, new below his father's B&O bell. He planted,

wooed them, and now looks up as I stand saying I wrecked

the only beauty he gave himself, an Alpha Romeo roadster,

white, washed sleek, my mother's hair blowing in it. May,

he'll die, steam in the street a year off, brow open like a rose.

This is my time of small envelopes, weekend work, the market

carts whose wheels I scrub with a toothbrush, learning to pay.

I watch firm-calved women, single fathers, the slow walkers

who never speak, the work-wearied who sag, list-driven wives

furtive under signs I string like my dreams. I smell them pass.

His face hangs without flicker, eyes drift the grass like a dark

butterfly, gray pupils glazed. I wait, still, for defeat's anger.

He's alone, gardening beneath the bell, bronze god-head on

a slender wooden pole, brass dimmed silent, its rope frayed.

Bees wheel there, and move on. We all pay, he says, and blinks.

I remember his fingers work wet dirt that clings as he pushes

the seed, watering what he'll never see bloom, his face hung,

dark as honey budded in the bell's hood. You look like him,

they said at the funeral, so I grinned, bright as the undying

blossom trying to climb a pole he'd abandon and so would I.