Patriarch

I think sometimes my father might have liked
to be called like Abraham, to sacrifice
us to something higher, to be
both blessed and freed . . . only sometimes,
you understand, on certain days in certain moods
when we fought our brother or turned our backs—
at such times, I think, my father poising the knife
above me and glimpsing the substitutive ram
caught in a thicket by its horns, struggling, stuck,
might have pretended for a moment not to see.

“Wha’ Izzat?”

My nephew, walking unsteadily as if
at sea, points at this and that, asking
for each name Adam left

over: at the puddle’s sick slick of rainbow,
the sewer grate’s thirsty grin, the slurp
and suck at the end of a bath we gave him

with no-tears conditioner. For what
are we readying you? I guess for now
the soakings in Florida are almost

predictable, so during the afternoon deluge
we make it in to our air-conditioned
island, down for a nap. You’ll wake

to things whose names we didn’t know.