Prefigured Hour

And the boys imagine their father is the snake that lives 
beneath the porch and curls into the ouroboros.

And the brothers lie on their bellies on the grass, 
and the snake lies on its belly, too, silent in the dirt.

And the boys search for a long enough stick to draw
the snake from beneath the wooden planks.

And the boys imagine their father is the boots 
he left by the back door, caked with the world’s mud, 

that their father is the crow lying still at the road’s verge, 
some dark obelisk formed in stuporous morning light. 

And the boys suspect their father is the film of dust 
on the windowsill and the gray fog lingering above the river. 

And sometimes he is the myopia of grass and the broken
earth and the wet smell of leaves in heavy rain. 

And their father is the pilgrimage of hours, and the boys 
imagine each day’s eyelid slowly opening and closing 

while a hearse of clouds moves past like a parade. 
And their father is the smoke seeping from the neighbor’s chimney 

and gathering itself into a kind of living breath, floating above 
the caretaker trees amid the evening calls of crows. 

And the boys believe their father swims now with the catfish
and is some unknown map and augury of shadows.