Door frames off the square, the inside sweating tile-brick walls uncovered, the checkerboard linoleum floors tilted toward infinity or at least in the direction of my northern bedroom window, which in winter is half-frozen with ice thick enough some mornings to draw on with a fingernail, while in the dust of summer the heat though everywhere fills up the sunburned space with what my sister calls the angels, who live also in the attic, no less famous for its stars and star-like rain that sometimes slips on through the ceiling into the shy air.
A man standing before his children with nothing in his hands, the angst coming down like air the weight of gravity through the whole length of his body, a lifetime of falling and slow settling like night fog or soft rain, as if there were a lake inside him and above that the cloud-float of a mind, until a day, like now, the water rises to the limits of its form: and it does no good to say that fathers are the fathers of their own misery, it does no good to take it all to heart, when all he is doing is standing there, alone, in silence, disappearing into himself.
For her poem of the week, Carol Rumens chooses "Akwaba" by Kwame Dawes. "The poem resembles a miniature song cycle, each song having a shape of its own, while following an upward curve of emotion. Line seven, standing by itself at the end of the first poem-song, signals intensity when it utters the child’s name."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
"I’m not that old, but I’ve lived long enough to know that the lion’s share of my life is behind me. I know there are relationships I can’t hold on to, and places I can’t return to. I’m just beginning to see 'real time,' the arc of almost half a century, and how the generational waves, both violent and beautiful, define our species."
