Understanding Your Old Man

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 Understanding Your Old Man 

— for Emerson, Eden, and Shiloh


It's all held together, of course,  

but loosely as an infant’s head 

held. Sometimes, when the horizon 


is wet and heavy with towels,

a breeze unlocks the light fabric

of the blue fishing shirt, which lifts open

 

like a gate that I duck through 

into the world so poorly hidden

right there on the other end 


of the laundry line. And sometimes, 

dragging across the evening over

the trampoline a stitch of geese so long


a pine could snag it like a suture, 

and if it did the tender, orange flesh 

of Tuesday would surely open, dumping


its intestines on our heads 

till we were good and sloppy 

with God. At the old place


we peeled up the laminate 


and found hardwood. Since then 

I give it my all to hang on 

to hangnails and shuffle slow, drag


fingers through the dirt 

like a neanderthal, ears sharp  

for the dry rasp which is 


the brittle edge of a scab

that wants to picked and pulled 

till the timeless seeps out. 

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