Big men
always seem
to only
talk about
small things.

When he died I was waiting
for my meal at a fast food restaurant thirty miles out.
My father called me and said,
without crying,
"Pap passed away."
I regret that I still kept waiting
for my food.

When I saw his body,
shorter than I remember,
in the casket lined with white,
I thought Am I man now?
I didn't say any words for him,
but laid a handed-down
golden cross necklace
over his cold fingers.
Part of me was buried, too.

The sky behind the bare winter branches, blue and white, nearly reflective. I was almost an angel,
spread wide in the snow,
if only I had known about my wings.

If you were to ask my father,
he'd tell you I'd always been
a happy kid.

If you asked my mom,
she'd tell you something
different, but happy for the
most part.

You can't ask me such questions.
I hardly give thought to it now.

I was under the canopy for
what seemed like an eternity.
To a child, time is nothing, so
that's saying something.
It was cold, but that's what I'd needed, since warmth gives way to lies. I was looking for something true, and I didn't know where else
to search but the sky.
Were I to look anywhere else,
I'd just be retracing steps.

I was listening to a tape,
Iron Butterfly, wondering where
the name came from.
I fell asleep before turning
the tape over, and when I woke up,
I woke up to the sound of
my father calling my name and
an engine revving somewhere,
my brother driving 'round
looking for me.

When they found me lying there,
they thought I was hurt.
When I told them I wasn't they
asked what I'd been doing and I said
looking for some truth.
I was paddled and sent to my room
for the rest of the evening.

I stopped searching after that.
It always hurts to know for certain.

There's something in the water
making everyone a fool,
reading doorsigns that say "push"
and yet, they still are trying to pull.

Why trespass so long in a body?
Is the soul so vain that it
needs to fill a space,
never moving to be free
both in dreams and in joys,
hinged to this heart
like the shadow to my heels?
        Like the shadow to my heels,
why a spirit bound to anything,
not chasing distant stars,
not moving in eternity,
not looking for a vacant space
to spread itself unbound?

I wonder if, when the sun rises,
it brings a little something
back from the east.
Do its golden rays have stories
it wishes to tell, or lessons or gifts
to give us when it gets back?
I guess what I want
is to know that it remembers
and thinks of all of us
while it is gone.
Or does it shed all memory
of its time spent with me?
Does the sun come up
out of duty or love?