Before I breathed A young man held my mother coaxed her with unpracticed grace from Irish Catholic garments between rough sheets that smelled like carpentry and dirt. In photographs from back then we have the same wrinkled eyebrows, the same reddish beards, but different creases kissing the corners of our eyes.
There are canyons in my knuckles carved out by cold. Not New Mexico cracks in too-hot soil, but staff-lines of the song New England skin sings— I cannot deny I was born here.
My father wears gloves now when he works outside Says he never used to, but the pain maybe got too much Too many winters laying palms flat against elm, ash, sycamore, feeling for a pulse counting on his wrist, waiting for a murmur, subtle hush in the rhythm; telling symptom of a faulty valve.
I work weekends at a veterinary clinic and the doctor there does this, too, though sometimes, being held, cats purr too loud to listen and I must reach across the room and turn the handle on the faucet; Most cats fear water.
Well Father, I cannot drink from the soil and I do not always land on my feet But father, listen to my heartbeat Put your hand on my chest and don’t fear as my body creaks in the wind—
Hear it?
Father My boughs, my winter-catchers are thin, but it is not root-rot, moth, parasite; I am not felled like the beard you hacked from your chin the day you decided to love, to suffer the rest of your life with that Irish Catholic girl— This is merely my first season. Brush the snow from my shoulders.
Please comfort me quietly, like skin, cracking: “My son my sapling you’ll grow.”