We were at Grandma\u2019s house for the last time,
\nmy mother, sister and me. While they slept
\nI read, under a blanket, on the edge<\/p>\n
of the camp bed. The slow glow of the fire
\nimprinting the flickering plain before Troy.
\nI read of Telemachus and his men<\/p>\n
beaching in the sandy light of Pylos,
\ndriving on hard into the Spartan hills,
\nthe rolling lands where horses run thunder, <\/p>\n
stunned at his going in to the palace \u2014
\njust speaking to Menelaus, Helen,
\nlike they were real people. I sat and heard<\/p>\n
the king tell of the recon, the belly,
\nof his hold over Proteus tightening
\nlike the thickening speech marks, read forgetting <\/p>\n
where I was, forgetting the funeral
\nin the cloud-clawed morning, read in a grip
\ndeeper than blinking or breath, till that pat<\/p>\n
of the kid\u2019s head, Telemachus there, a son
\nfully grown, like the lack of his own.
\nThe camp bed must have creaked. The low fire clicked. <\/p>\n
I wonder did I think of my father
\nalready laid to rest, or departed,
\nor barely sleeping, just the other side<\/p>\n
of a wall which was just as well the world.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Apartment<\/p>\n
I was just going to write about Sendai.
\nThe river, the plants. That rackety flat
\nriddled with cold, cold that punched the gut
\nso blood had no place to hunker from the day.
\nThen, tatami strands bruised mould in the heat,
\nwhen for ages before, glass had rattled like sheet
\nice in its groove, and I winced on the scale
\nof a broken-winged bird flung upward in a gale.<\/p>\n
No stopping the wind, or what it would scatter,
\nthinking back: not the mushroom, but the spore,
\nnot the casing of fear, but the core;
\nlike all I always meant to repair \u2013 the light,
\nthe door \u2013 those little oversights of foresight
\nthat at the time never seemed to matter. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Telemachus We were at Grandma\u2019s house for the last time, my mother, sister and me. While they slept I read, under a blanket, on the edge of the camp bed. The slow glow of the fire imprinting the flickering plain before Troy. I read of Telemachus and his men beaching in the sandy light of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[371,372],"tags":[375],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n