Voice low, father, you are
hurting aloud from the book of your life on this earth.

You are tearing out verses, pages,
reciting histories of mountains, waving

like oceans, gritting down teeth
at the sound of a needle as it enters your eye.

The telephone, father, you heard its call, you blinked in red
pajamas. You groped for the nightstand. Knocked

things over. I’ve read your sunken chest.
Halfway to death is blindness. And fingertips,

shin bruises, and if your hands broke, father,
you could not stroke your wife’s hair nor mouth

and neither could a son’s beard
fill your palms. Psalm is an open, burning text

but please, dip only your thumbs in twilight. Talk
not of God’s white furnace, father, and the fires

we are left in. Don’t tell
a tale of a man erased

like scuff on a window.