Death

My father’s back was turned

and I was young.

The blueberry’s cranberry

color backlit by sun;

white flesh squished into

my lifeline’s crinkle.

I tasted it, the tartness in my

glands a sting,

an impatience in my

July mouth.

My father’s back was turned

and I was young

and hasty,

just 10 and bookish

in the old man’s garden

plot, to see the berries

and the rhubarb

while the

whitecorn ears got boxed

for worms.

My father’s back was turned

and I was young

to gardening and garter snakes,

the green kind, along

the July fence all curvy

against the straight.

I was young, my short hoe for

beanweeds making me

right-handed in the sun

and thirsty,

a parchedness of nose

and cotton-mouth,

a copper taste like bloody

teeth in apple bites.

Eye contact in the slither second’s           

parallel, the passing motion

ended by the blocking force of steel

blade justice for the apple-giving trick

they said he played on me

or would have.

Preemptive justice

in the garden,

fresh blood on juicy

blood meal making

cakes, the tool-shaped tongue

a crooked glisten.

Thinness, in both our girths

and psyches, instinctual

betrayal of our reason

for a taste of something

clean and earth-grown,

both our chances blown.

I kept my limpy victory

in a painter’s bucket’s

brackish water until it

smelled like something new

and different, white flesh

turned grey and rotted

with the water, less color

to the snakey skin,

more ugly fumes

to make my father

come back out

next week,

take Sunday’s naptime

up with burial,

stern looks and grunts

of anger and disgust

at sonship’s slippage,

Death’s triple knocking on his

hands and eyes and nose.