Obstacle Course                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

I inadvertently knocked over your coffee today,                                           Mom, and thought of the time                                                                                40 years ago, you set the kitchen on fire.                           
                                                                                                                                         In the weeks before a father's death,
these domestic proofs
are dreams out in the open.   

In the case of the kitchen fire, 
it was your dad who was dying. 

You were 50-years-old, chicken breasts sizzling
in oil. You’re still struggling 
to keep kosher.

Beguiling rabbinic eyes watching from the living room, 
smoke and flames dancing a hora up the wall.   
  
In the case of the coffee, I’m
54 years old, cramped in the corner, 
surrounded by filthy end-tables, 
magazines you’ve been subscribing to all my life, 
TV remotes, Kleenex, 

and my dad, 

eyes like a little boy learning multiplication tables. 

I’m trying 
to set up his nebulizer.

Mist dancing at his mouth.

—June, 2021

Published by Vital Sparks , October, 2021. It also appears in my second collection, The Night of Electric Bikes, (Finishing Line Press, 2023).