What We Knew

If knowledge is power what collusion
of human and physical forces stripped from my father
the right to face his known and certain
prognosis: terminal, progressive, but slow
enough for him to choose what he wanted
to do with years of relative clarity, years
when his world was not yet strange as waking
within sleep into a bright day, relentlessly
normal, yet nothing identifiable or secure
because in this dream you can never find
where you have left your glasses,
or you must get somewhere fast–your legs work
but only like buckets slopping mud,
the rest of your body is like machinery left
uncovered all winter, almost frozen with rust,
the very footings flake corroded chunks back into the soil,
so that he can no longer stand, he cannot maneuver
spoons of yogurt, of applesauce, between his lips.
My mother has to feed him, he opens his mouth
astonished, his hands loop and dart
as if moments were bubbles burst by broken
syllables, words which brush by closely
as his own breath. I have his letters: ninety-five pages
written to my mother from Paris, Marseilles,
the chateau where he was quartered in Reims.
This is World War II and he loves her, she is his
angel puff, sugar puff he warns that when he returns
you should not expect to sleep much that night. He plans
a second honeymoon: they will roam the country,
spend the night at beautiful places that we see–
just taking our time and making love. I love
this man who gives himself so fully
to imagination, who believes in the powerful
cord of language, this man whom I never saw
except for his loneliness. What is loss but a man
ransacking hooks and hangers and drawers,
pulling shorts on over dress pants over
chino slacks jammed into plaid golfing bermudas.
I want to know what he feels inside the layers
of pink polo, pale-blue button-down chambray, a summer weave
short sleeve, three ties knotted like a child navigating
the orange and black sway and slant
of a fun house maze. What clever manipulation
of stripes and ramps made each step churn
the room’s air thick as sludge? Somebody knew
how to manufacture gravity, knew how to weigh
just how much a kid could take
and just how much she would pay–willingly
suffer hours of rug burn’s stung elbows–
to hurl the stone of her body over falls somehow constructed
out of carpet, a deep thrum recognized as motor,
and something that I imagined might be
my own joy: impossible, tall and powerful
enough to rise, to lift me, pitch me
through a lightly-sprung door, my father
knowing when to be there, catching me
as if I weighed nothing, as if nothing
would ever protect him, ever need to,
as if all he needed to know
caught me flying through that door,
swirling me around until I couldn’t ask
for anything but more.