Salutation

Father root, tuber too deep in the earth
to dig up, your Irish lump of a heart
already gone to blight when you made me—

you are the well where I first saw my own
wobbly face, from you the glue that sticks
my dopey, bashful, stuttering words

so they bunch up and when one stops, the rest
bump and tumble into a heap. Didn’t I learn
to walk on the outskirts of your trousers?

I think I laughed with my whole body then,
snuggled in a warm hollow of mattress
between you and my mother, same hollow

that filled one night when a train whistle
woke you and I was made. Long ago
I lost the sound of your voice, but must have

kept your nose and eyes because this morning
I found them again in the rearview—red light
to green to red—until a racket of horns

behind us blew you away like a soap
bubble breaking its thin spray on my face.
Father distant, father flickering star,

now I’m gazing from the outskirts of night,
dizzy with the thought of you still burning
there, though you have long gone out here.