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to grit my teeth & stop crying.  He never told me
about the silent stories of the stars, where loss
lives, what to do when you are alone at night
in Southern Australia.

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My father once told me our family's last name meant
white horse in German.  I have yet

to find how to lead this horse to water
or make her drink.

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My father has a European disease,
but is still alive, leatherette &
chrome, not even a receding hairline.

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My father forgot to mention why I am in love with
a hunter's moon, purring muscles and mandible,
giving me something to chew on for awhile.

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My father writes for biochemists and engineers
& used to tell me he would beat my ass bloody
if I came back in the house.  He told me to stop
reading all the time, play with a ball or stick.  
In this same instance

I remember sitting on the grass outside & then
I found a dead cat under a fir tree.

My father told me to bury it, to bury this shaken
earth, these headless chickens, & also
the failure of our given name.

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My father telephones me, sounding like
a gas lamp somewhere far off, he says

he wasn't trying to kill himself all those years.
We are just curious for the short and desperate,
he says, for the cello ache of a surprise knuckle curve
to our own cheeks.

My father tells me he wanted to know if we would
really play the Pepto Bismol advertisement song
at his funeral because he asked for it,
or would we be too embarrassed to do so,
instead play something about Irish girls & stoplights.

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Have I learned anything from him at all, my father
asks me.  

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I wonder if God will always protect drunks
and liars.  

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He asks me if I remember

the little girl my mother miscarried at 39 &

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I wash up on shore.  I turn from

the telephone like a small seal lion
& I begin to weep.

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