For Kelly
When thunder woke me to the early dark, I lay awake listening
to the pines whip the house,
and remembered a story
a woman once told me of her childhood in California,
how storms off the Pacific
would wake her at night, frighten
her into her parents’ room.
Such comfort and warmth, she said,
in those drowsy voices, that crawling under the covers
into their private dark. Sometimes she slept
beside her mother, sometimes
her father. How they must have loved her, she said,
though they never let her sleep between them.
I am not a father, but I think about the love of fathers,
the sheet thrown back for the daughter, the rough hand
rejoining the hand of the mother.
And because of her story
I know more about the love a man can feel for a woman,
love not born of the self
or what the self gives the world.
These nights alone
when the country lies between us like a curse,
I like to picture lightning flaring through the curtains
of a bedroom, a young girl standing
at the foot of a bed.
I try to imagine in the white spark of the window
the small angel her father saw,
her white gown the pure light of her heart,
and write in my letters
how love fears even the barrier of a blessing.
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