The wind carries
whispers, words unsaid,
and now I know
it rasps from
my father’s voice. We let him go
from a monolith, on the slope of a
world, with
a city like a bonfire—an ember nucleus
nestled in twigs and logs and leaves—
below.
The sound dins
from the grains of
desert salt, the crumbles
of beach sand, the cigarette ash
of blaze-charred refuse—
and anything else
that glides
adrift.
All the time spent with smoke in our mouths,
knowing singe would bring him back, transform his matter—he, emerging
from the landfill heaps,
muddling himself
home, muscle-spasmed, stretching
out, folding forward—ringing the doorbell
with his chin, falling back into
our arms.
The wind carries secrets.
My father died a poor catholic
that hid his faith from
an atheist son like
a mutation.
Now I’ve captured him in a vial that hangs
around my neck, sealed off
from air, silencing his cries—as a god
could do, as a father’s hand
does to the back of
the neck of a stifled
tantrum.