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Show Letter to my Father Rain falls outside the picture Window, rotting our earth. You leave For work each morning with eversharps In your ribbed white shirt pocket. When you were young you looked like somebody Famous, and once in Granada, Mississippi A boy at a movie house asked for your autograph. You had freckles once and a brother Who looked just like you. The two of you raced over boxcars In the trainyard, smoke from Bethlehem Steel billowing over Baltimore. And you rushed home to coleus shooting From flowerpots on the window ledge, The mulberry tree waiting like a mother By the red enamel door. But that was all Before World War II. In a family photo taken When you were 9, you fidget with the anchor Buttons on your sailor suit. You smirk at the world, Defying it to change the safety of your father's body, Your brother's hair pearled as the sky. In the last picture your brother sent from overseas He seems to hold his breath. His pupils are dilated, Opening to the whole world. The sky leans on his bony shoulders. |