It's snowing tonight, and I think ******* Dad, when Maryland beats Indiana and I move to text him.
He's beyond snow now. So what do I do with these unbearable photos he took of me standing alone in the withered sun on monumental trains, I was six or seven, out by the rusting roundhouse in Brunswick?
It's been snowing for hours & I carve a footpath out to the unplowed street to watch the shining gray banks under the amber light.
There is no route to carve through this silence. My father was built from ghost towns, from Manzanar, from the endless pine-dark of Idaho's rivered night, from all the unmapped places, he grew complete in himself.
And even now as I watch the snow slant and stumble I am left behind as his son apart from him & without.
The snow dives into the night blankness & I wonder if I had died first, cutting short this reckless careless crooked sprawl, would he be writing here?
The smeared gray glow of the screen across his hands, the fat flake snow rising like dough beneath the windows?