Witness
Witness my father who drives and hums the notes to a song I do not know and I
do not attempt to ask for fear that in asking he would stop
to explain, thus diminishing the magic of his throat as we travel along
the Susquehanna. Witness, too, the clouds that resemble a hive
of bees, the crows and the triumph of their carrion, the river that could carry
our faces if we came close enough. Witness that my favorite color
has always been blue for reasons not always clear to me, but if I had to assign
a color to mercy, it would be that—I do not know
my father’s favorite color and this being yet another question
I do not ask having gone this long without knowing.
I look over at his head that appears to shrink in the distance between
our seats. Some afternoons when I was younger he rested his head
in my lap so I could extract his white hairs. Itchy, he complained
about their stiffness, about time. I am roughly the same age
he was when he would ask me to cradle his head away from the clamor
of his three sons, my fingers smaller then. At this rate, you won’t have any
hair left, my brothers and I would tell him, but in that silence, he would fall
asleep while I tested the tenderest spots on his scalp, worried I might pull
the wrong thread and unravel my father, have to spool his head together—
what child does not worry about reassembling their parents
when asked? What would I have told my mother then? I pulled
and pulled on my father, wondering how this will end.
