Poem

The unexceptional mystery takes place:
around eleven, love turns to matter, Dad

dead. The ward grows and shrinks, early Spring
breaking promises through the glass.

Dad’s untoothed mouth gawps, and its last
O holds one darkness; dark of a worked-out

abandoned mine. His absence is brute
absurdity, his hand soft as vellum.

His new state exposes the stark child of him,
and un-sons me. No answers now to a son’s

questions, about this, about the sense,
for all his slightness, of a long life’s mass

coming to rest, a settling that churns up
grief in a rounding cloud. Dad

dead; ends of the opaque trick
that turns our gold to lead