The best memories involve some blindness.
There’s a reason we close our eyes to dream.
Nightfall, or in this case a matte white mist,
your finger’s point, a hush, a fog-gray fox
who felt invisible beneath our oaks.
Each night, the stories, the self-respecting epics,
nothing with the stink of grade school on it,
another last chapter, until your eyelids drooped,
slowly turning your own words to dreams
as we held in our collective breath.
Dozing in our clothes, waiting for the moon to set
so we could match the punched-out patterns
in empty tuna cans up to the autumn stars.
With handfuls of constellations, we felt
big enough for joy beneath that vastness.
You neglected your yardwork but made a maze
through the head-topping subtropic grass.
We lost each other by flashlight each night,
hoping if we lingered long enough,
our bedtimes and the daylight world of baths,
neat lawns, and back-to-school would fade
like tired fireflies,
our mother
would give up calling us and live a life
of clean quiet houses and grownup chats,
and we’d be left to grow shaggy and wild,
to live on berries and the smell of earth.
For my father
