Dad and the Eye Exam
My chin rests in this little sling
and I let you come back from the dead.
Go ahead, sit by the magazine rack
as the optometrist taps our history
into the record. Your torn retina,
my macular degeneration.
As I lean back, dilating drops blur nature
from nurture, kidney stones
and cholesterol. Between you and I
what other maladies are undiagnosed?
My eyes are moist cradled in precision.
I outnumber your years. A few degrees.
The cylinder turns in the refractor.
Which lens is better, one or two?
This, or the other. A calibrated peekaboo.
You were there, then you were not.
So I bring you back. Let you see
the apple more dim, beneath the tree.
Uncompromising light scours
left. Right. We wait in the bloom
blindness leaves behind.
When it retreats, you go
and I blink, and work
to make out the letters.
* * * * *
Milk Run
4 am and the half-light beyond
the window knows
I have not slept.
Our bed is aglow from the abandoned
game on the tablet. And my wife
she is a light sleeper.
But my stirrings have not yet broken
her rest. The blue hour
drapes our bodies
makes us seem slight in this room, in this
world. I watch our ribs rise
and fall.
In two hours, I will grind coffee, press boil on the pot.
Do what the calendar says should be done.
A hundred years ago
my grandfather was a boy who rose early
to deliver milk with an old horse
that knew the route.
Hooves clopped, cart wheels whined
the gaits of work on the street.
When the horse stopped
my grandfather pulled a bottle
from the crate, and ran
to place it on the stoop.