He never taught me
how to perform
the art of the jump-shot.
I simply watched.
He would dribble down
the clumsy circle
of our carport, back up
behind the exomaed bicycle
and detach his body
from the world, against
gravity’s insistent pull
and fade into a legend,
his wrist becoming a swan
pecking toward the sun.
He never taught me
how to arc a blade,
the gripping bite of a razor,
against my cheek.
I simply watched. He would
lather his face with foam
and I sat conversing with him
as the blade giddily glided,
graceful as a demi-god
reaping the crop of auburn
from his then young face.
When I tried, as a teenager,
I nicked my upper lip and
only harvested my own blood.
When he grilled, he flipped
the meat like an ace of spades,
magic in his wrist revealed.
When he drove, his hands
and feet became extensions
of the car. When he drove
a bus, his eyes sought all angles
of the road, chatoyant caution
in the flicker of his iris.
When he fiddled with our old,
beaten, mellow-toned guitar
he was articulate though
he never knew a chord’s name
nor what song erupted from him.
He read the Bible, but kept
the gospel in his eyes, at the tip
of his green thumb. He read
the Koran, the Torah, the words
of Gotham. I read how he
sought truth, beauty, in all
people. I simply watched him
traverse the dividing line
between saint and stubborn,
between sinner and relinquish.
If there was ever a man
after some God’s heart, he was
one who asked questions
and lived into the answers.
He kept his hands clean, kept
his chin high and mind
was always lofty and companioned
with a world of dreams.
He would often stare out windows
sitting at the dinner table, and I
knew he was living into a prayer.
I never asked what he was doing,
never asked how to do what he
could do. What my Father taught me
was to listen to my own inner voice,
no other’s, and if I wanted to be
a man, I was to simply watch
what a man did for that spoke
a language more fluid than air.