Frank

Like an uncertain baby, you walk,
gangly, lumpy in your flesh, turning
feet inward. I think you belong
somewhere else, some lighter body,

aerodynamic maybe. Maybe atomically
small, drifting through the room,
flicking between your Civil War
books, shrinking into the memory

picture of me, enraged on your big lap,
looking through the black and white
as you recall the vastness of the field
and fat bullets scurrying like mice

into your bones. Found their home.
You weren’t born, I remind you,
and stare into the fireplace, the fawning
flames, which illuminate your no-name eyes.

I wish you were smaller.
Now you’re taking up space against
a vase, synthetic flowers, the whole foyer.
It takes three of us to lift you,

and I try to wish you blue, or through
some hot hole in the atmosphere into
the ethereal light your body is wanting.
You wobble and limp, your face ashamed
of your largeness or my smallness.

Some fatness is growing
in the morning before I leave your house.
Your syllables disagree, roll in a plural
frenzy from your mouth – little rabbits
trying to find a hole. The fox gets them.

I bring you home after that.
Morning breaks your window,
molds your thick body. The atrophy.
Year by year. Smallness after smallness.

Your arms stiff, hard, metal bones,
curved like they want to hook something close.
Can I have us? Can they fit me?
The bones are too angry.

- for Granddaddy

(Wasn't going to post anymore, but this one is on my blog anyway, so I figured I'd go ahead.)