We board on the lazy sea crawler,
us cowards, in tea and cream and glory.
Martha, hands in her hair, in her sweet age;
We lurch, cold, remaining in sweeter earth,
And I into Sam's cloud of august.
We are hearts only bent on fame,
While the ashes of our cousins —
A new lineage in lieu of dirt —
Begs us in their choral aching for a keening.

I always felt older than you, even though you were
forty-eight (but not fifty) years my senior.
My instinct was to put out my arms so you could come
crawling, curling up in my lap, and I could
pet your thinning hair and whisper that I would never
let anything hurt you ever again. Kiss your
soft, shaking hands and shield you from everything.
You would alternate between calling me “Dad”
and calling me “kid.” I was embarrassed to say so, but I
loved it when you did. You were so sad
sometimes, and so nervous when we talked about ***
or our bodies. I didn’t have time to tell you
I could have moved you in a way you weren’t used to,
that the things you were embarrassed by were
okay with me. I wouldn't let you talk about death. So we
talked about Leonard Cohen instead.

And I keep wondering if your wife saw the same
tear stains I saw on the back of your shirt
before I got out of the car. I wonder what you
told her. Does she know the part about love?

God said, “I made you only so you would obey me.”
His voice was something you didn’t hear so much
as feel rumbling in your bones, and sometimes it
made you feel so shaky you could hardly stay standing.
And you and I learned how to fear God,
how to do everything we had to to get by and then
hide our faces, be quiet quiet, and then when we knew
God wasn’t looking we would act it all out on our toys
that weren’t meant for the games we played.
You used to cry more than I did. You were younger.
But not all the tears were sad. Sometimes our
spirits caught fire and we cried because everything was
holy, holy, holy
and we didn’t notice yet how that just meant full of holes.
We didn’t know who God was, even though we already
called him Father. Didn’t know enough to call him Dad.
“Our Father who art standing in the living room with a horse whip,
David be thy name.”
And we prayed for peace.