Divorce entrenched you: phlegmatic.
My surprise visit dislodges decades.
You serve a vegetarian broth; doctor's orders.
Fortuitous bond, soup thicker than blood.

I pick with my father: spilt arc of blackberry
brambles across a back-lane fence.

You shouldered us as best you could
as you did a rifle at eighteen
in a civil war; now take pains to remind.
My grievance, yearnings, lie fallow.

False chamomile in the cracked pavement.
Thorns, berries. Bees in the thorns.

After our year-long absence
we pick up as if nothing had happened.
A frisbee curves a smile in the air
thoughts about tomorrow, suspended.

Sails falling off white flowers. The bees
shake them loose as, for good, he wishes
he could make me his. This small forlorn.

Kept within earshot overt means
were quite unnecessary,
how you've aged prematurely
(and even birthdays I let lapse).

He cannot like his daddy.
He cannot like his daddy.