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.