Tuesday, February 5, 2008

in search of

I close my eyes.

I want to understand this the way my father understands his hands
pushing and prodding the dark matter into the shapes he knows better than words
(his eyes glittering)
like orange juice spilled on lined paper,
staining a truth where there once was only possibility.

I want to find the universe
in a drawer labeled
“forward”
as if it was made of atoms who were begging to be
connect and somehow be more than they were
connect and somehow be more than the empty space between his crumpled fingers, more than bits of your eyelashes and the distant star that exploded one Tuesday six billion years ago, before Wednesday knew it was coming with the rising sun.

It is this way each Sunday.
I watch him, raising fists with jilted manners,
sweeping impassioned words in foreign tongues into the cracks within my skin,

yet all I can think of is how I wish to know how a question becomes a question and not an answer, and how with a simple flick of his wrist he tells secrets he doesn’t know he’s keeping.