To My Father / To My Unborn Son

The stars are not hereditary.

—Emily Dickinson

There was a door & then a door     surrounded by a forest.

        Look, my eyes are not   your eyes.

    You move through me like rain heard from another country.

      Yes, you have a country.           Someday, they will find it   while searching for lost ships . . .

Once, I fell in love     during a slow-motion car crash.

We looked so peaceful, the cigarette floating from his lips       as our heads whip-lashed back   into the dream & all

        was forgiven.

  Because what you heard, or will hear, is true: I wrote a better world onto the page

    & watched the fire take it back.

Something was always burning.

    Do you understand? I closed my mouth but could still taste the ash

      because my eyes were open.

From men, I learned to praise the thickness of walls.

        From women,     I learned to praise.

        If you are given my body, put it down. If you are given anything     be sure to leave no tracks in the snow.

  Know that I never chose which way the seasons turned. That it was always October           in my throat.

  & you: every leaf       refusing to rust.

  Quick. Can you see the red dark shifting?

This means I am touching you. This means       you are not alone—even

  as you are not.

    If you get there before me, if you think           of nothing

& my face appears rippling       like a torn flag—turn back.

Turn back & find the book     I left us, filled

        with all the colors of the sky   forgotten by gravediggers.

Use it. Use it to prove how the stars       were always what we believed

  they were: the exit-wounds         of every     misfired word.