1974 Almanac

The staff psychologist—the one we don’t trust.

{Unctuous, “well-coated.” Like a poisonous flower. Nerium oleander. Wolfbane in Dostoyevsky glasses.}    

And how are we?  

My father wanes.

His posture while attended to in bed: (i) broken candelabra.

Mickey Mantle, my father says from a corner of his mouth.      

The Commerce Comet, I say.

He likes to wash dishes there, he says.

Where ‘there’? I say.

My father looks upward without moving his head on his pillow.

We sit at a table by the coffee dispenser in the facility’s dinette.

He juts his chin. Re-juts. Neck-craning. Communicating with birds. His lips keep moving.  

My father is passing through last doors.

         Feast of Cocked Hats.

         Holy Smell of Train Yard.

         Bread of Abandonment. Bread of Troubled Gums.

         Tent of Escorts.

He stretches his mouth and invites his teeth to leave.

Skylab 4. The tallest building in Akron, Ohio. Broadway Joe Namath. Joe Willie Namath.

God who is beyond time: O Renamer, rename him.

Do you remember Bo Schembechler? I ask him.   

Oh sure, he says to me like a man at the next gas pump over. Oh sure.

And I am never the same son after that.