Elegy for My Father

Even before you decided to die

something inside you dried up.

I'm sorry I failed

was all you could say,

and not even in person.

I need to see you

someone called to me, beckoning me

down the hallway of my grade school

to my mother waiting

to tell me

what you did.

It wasn't small.

Where are you, John?

your answering machine cried.

I still can't locate you.

I'm still sifting through

all these dishes and sweaters, aching

to make you into something,

to make this into something

I can give you, something

your smallness can hold. 

Ars Poetica

(FYI, an "Ars Poetica" is a poem about writing poetry. We're a little obsessed with our own process.)

I. 

Every essay I've ever read about Virginia Woolf

is full of one word: transgress.

It seems she's always violating the laws

of time and breaking into that sacred space 

between people. Always

lurking there, uninvited,

in the unspoken.

II.

Once, a poem crept up behind me and struck

me in the ear: What the hell is wrong with you?

It apologized later, of course,

and we went out for coffee as if nothing

was ever between us.

III.

I want to slip into small spaces,

hushed and ready to explore.

I don't really want to steal these

inner parts of you, just remember 

seeing them, and keep that.

IV.

Some days, I want to write 

without asking permission.

Some days, the words

punish me for this.

V.

We come together. We fall apart.

I call out to you, not sure

if the answer will be

a rocky echo or your faint song,

lingering in the air like the light pull

of a bow over cello strings.

The distance between us may be

too vast to transgress with words.

Still, I call. I chant. I sing.