lifts his salty spirit from the glass
and scurries back to the corner
of the cabinet before he is
noticed. The table, as always,
cluttered with huge tools whose
function is unfathomable,
but whose existence provides
sustenance. Another day
will come, another nap
at the bench, another drop
of the water that keeps him
in this room, sated, content.
At night, as he tucks dozens
of children into bed, they ask
if this is the night father goes
and harvests the next morning’s
meal from the source, brings back
the freshest breakfast they
have ever had. “What day
is tomorrow?” father asks,
and the children, now too keyed up
to sleep, yell “Easter! Easter!”,
and so here we are, at the neap corner
of a four-poster more vast than a county,
at the beginning of what may be
the greatest day of his life, or instead
may be the day he discovers himself
in an abstract yellow-brown smear.