Peeling
the potato I remember how long it took you
to come back from the dead, from the stupor of mud and exhaustion
of ash. The apples you dispatched in dream were right on cue
with the hawk whistling over pines, over my bed
till your volutes of speech turned in the air and a bank of stars
throbbed above. The smell of sulfur
lingered from a mine into which a child was shoveling
snow. I think of everything now, the space between a shattered
glass and a glacier’s fracture through which your
hand reached, an animal all itself made of time, then I read
your note, the poverty of words—sounds eager—
then and now, fleeing over the page. 
Brief Father
Peeling