Polishing Your Pill Box

After you had dressed, your fingers
checked inside your pants pocket
for the scalloped edges of this box.

Hearing the soft rattle of its contents,
you could step from the house into your day.
As a child I’d see you pause,

say, as we climbed adobe stairs
of the bell tower at the old mission.
You opened this box with your thumbs,

extracted a tiny white pill,
placed it under your tongue:
nitroglycerine,

your angina a member of our family.
A box the size of my thumb’s
last joint, it finally surfaced

in the basement, an ashen glint
in a corner of a cardboard carton.
Dipped in polish, the hem of an old

T-shirt pulls away the tarnish.
In Espinoza’s shop, Dad, your eyes
came to rest on this, something to hold

pills that eased the spasms clenching your chest,
eased the blood flow to your heart.
Your purchase sealed a bargain with your pain.

With a hinge of wire finely
coiled around a pin,
soldered to the one straight side,

it opens like a clam shell, empty.
Until your fifty-third year, my thirteenth—
the year your last infarction

left us fatherless—the fabric
of your pants pocket kept it polished:
Mexican silver,

and adorning its lid,
one round piece of turquoise
tiny as the head of a finish nail.