In the year of public access television
and the kitchen window northern flicker,
oxycodone and ring dings, hospital
parking lots and waiting in line

to enter the grocery store – in that year,
every day some new knowledge
met my father and me, stood

between us, the fold in the rorschach.
Pulling mats from his cat’s fur,
I watch him sleep on his side,
one hand under his ear, the other

between his knees, the same pose
I find myself in each morning.
Antiques Roadshow soundtracks the year

of tending – to an old cat, a burnt
garden, a dying man not yet dead,
not yet. A man who threads through me
like the smell of cut grass

as it passes through the window screen
above his bed. Salt poured into sugar,
sifted like sand through the fingers.