My father’s mind goads the tension of itself, and
Through its body’s heart, filters a brilliance, weighs its
Energies, and generous spills out through steady hands
The stuff that heralds a fast adeptness.
These mildest rogueries, like the wits that lined his
Boyhood’s pants-pockets–that line mine now–hit the
Base of his astuteness. Quickening gifts! Exposures
Of his soul’s splendor that begot my own,
That astounded, held the smallness of my beginning,
And weeping, wondrous-gazed into the stirring bundle
That was everything there, which in ephemeral buddings
Keeps whole the complexity of its exactness.
Perhaps it was this same majesty that found me: his
Little boy at seven, gentle-thumbing the ash and putty
Of his elbows while he, a bit tired, napped—those cells
So easily molded—their old clay, the softness of him.
