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

I’m one of those model men
in barbershop or unisex
salon windows. I’ve held my breath
here, like this, for decades.

O distant youth, O brilliantine,
I saw myself the other day
across the street in running time:
gabardined, red-faced, gone grey.

The cow’s-lick and the kiss curl.
I’m holding out. I’m blue in the face.
Telstar still orbits the Earth.
We don’t like what you’ve done to the place.

I am almost never there, in these
old photographs: a hand
or shoulder, out of focus; a figure
in the background,
stepping from the frame.
I see myself, sometimes, in the restless
blur of a child, that flinch
in the eye, or the way
sun leaks its gold into the print;
or there, in that long white gash
across the face of the glass
on the wall behind. That
smear of light
the sign of me, leaving.

Look closely
at these snapshots, all this
Kodacolor going to blue, and you’ll
start to notice. When you finally see me,
you’ll see me everywhere — floating
over crocuses, sandcastles,
autumn leaves, on those
melting snowmen, their faces
drawn in coal; among all
the wedding guests,
the dinner guests, the birthday-
party guests — this smoke
in the emulsion: the flaw.
A ghost is there; the ghost gets up to go.

No flood as parched as this — a mere foot
or two of gilded bilge — will turf us out

Darlings, I write to you from the moon
where I hide behind famous light.