I'm nine, standing on a beryl hill
under a humid dusk slab -
my sister picking wheat anthers
from stalks as tall as she is,
the scent of scorched sugar
knifing through the low.
My father leads us down
into the sharp wood line,
until we reach a clearing
where chatter-bearded men
operate a *** still in a glade,
making silken moonshine.
That memory sticks in the brain
like snow in a winter cobweb.
Later, on the drive home,
my father stopped to buy
white label Jim Beam -
we watched strange shades
rise from the deer graves
behind the liquor store lot.
Fast forward, I'm forty-five
& Dad's been dead eight years:
I've tried and failed to armor
myself against the wild pain
of the world. Everything
evaporates down to grief.
Example: here's a picture
of myself in Paris, in a blaze
of mezcal near Les Halles,
the sky full of titanic doves -
I feel only the brutal absence
of my second wife, unready
to share her bitter puzzles
or her raw pill spells.
She climbed into her pestle
& flew away over the river
into fields of burnt sugar
sown with copper *** seeds -
Baba Yaga drinking wine
distilled from absent fathers.