Father has gone out …

Father has gone out

to preach the gospel.

The playground is empty.

Our garage is empty.

Here is a ball, a rock, a knife.

I pound nails into a stump.

Mother calls and I must paint

the bathroom ceiling,

the bed rails,

porch siding.

Father has gone out,

so righteous his calling.

I follow a corduroy road,

shotgun cradled in my arms,

to the township dump.

A lone unwary crow approaches, here,

where bounty often eats.

I shoot.

She falls.

I break, death at my feet.

I wander empty streets at night,

singing to streetlamps,

craving cigarettes,

hunting for something with a name.

Decades wither under-foot.

Father talks about the dark.

Come inside where it is warm, I say,

but, night has come

without a lamp,

and he is gone before the dawn.