My father checks imagination.

Architects
bow to
his reality.

When artists throw tantrums,
his fine walls
never yield to their designs.

Blueprint universe
contained in his straight lines.

Always suffering
lesser men for his field.
Structured man,
you shield
us from unwieldy dreams.

Drawn
from the reeds of your writing desk,
I, too,
am inspected for
a practical edge.

I.

When we tell ourselves:
Be patient,
good things happen
in time…
do we know
what that implies?

Do we realize
we are weighing hearts
on the parabolic curve
of a watch’s slow unwind?

For me,
it is a comfort
inversely proportionate
to the size of the parameters we set.
Science would suggest
a sentiment stretched over infinity
cannot possibly have weight:
a massless belief,
a quantum state.

Week in and week out
we find an empty promise of change
in the unending planes of doubt.

Oddly,
physics would suggest
such a transparent theory
is filled instead with a boundless energy.

We invest every ounce of our E
into this hollow idea,
this paper prophecy.

Like father Franklin,
we drag our hearts with thin strings
through loud noises and bright lights.
Like father Frankenstein,
we sew our minds
to a patchwork body of strife.
We trust that,
in good time,  
all things come to life.

II.

Impatience is scientific,
it’s true.
Our wildest imaginations grew
in the span
of a century or two.
Part of a grand tradition,
sometimes
I catch myself
counting down
unnumbered minutes until
at last
I meet you.

Love,
I’m a stitch in the
fabric of things;
you’re the needle that’s
pulling me through.

Growing up,
I knew three gods.

Graef, morning god,
stole Father when I woke.
Every day he made us sandwiches,
spreading love between
strokes of peanut butter.
White bread,
beautifully packed
in a browning,
thin paper bag
we knew was inescapable.

Anhalt, noon god,
gave Father lunchtime at home.
We worshiped him
in brighter times
when Father could stay.
Only in his mercy
could he sit down
to watch us play.

Schloemer,
evening god,
kept Father past sundown,
when we ate to his honor,
on his dollar,
and our Mother frowned.
Father swept in late,
thin with the weight of an offering,
our shadowy relief.
He carried in the harvest:
weary smiles,
a rough face,  
a bounty of yawns.
Always
a storm of secure arms,
and occasionally,
a bag of Culver's hamburgers.


He was distant company.

I remember their names now,
his first lords.
They tested his mettle, and
Mother's,
in that tiny house
our Father built.

They groomed us for our great flight.

Four were raised up
under three stars:
morning, noon, and night.

Too much you press enter
when you work at a structure.
I see you cling so affectionately
to that cross,
‘plus’ you call it,
minus an intuition or two--
a new way to do your part.

It is wonderful the way you start
to move the numbers in your head, and
I cannot keep up with the crunch.

Your mind is full of
the right angles.
With practice
I could preach mechanics,
in time
I could reinforce the bracings of your brain.
Make sure nothing
buckles when Mother brings up the calculations
you have forgotten
while pushing at plus, plus, plus.

When she figures you have forgotten us.

Father,
when I marvel at your
calculator,
it is because I never understand what to enter,
what I could possibly add.
The matrix of
that machine  
is the greatest stability
I have ever known.
Precious steel atrium:
vibrant, vibrating, and
full.

Invincible,
you move from firm to firm
and build us a miracle
in which to grow.