bathtime
time is the actuality of perspective,
the lands of low tide are more than myth
only if one lives longer than a few hours
—rogue waves, kraken, pirates, we learn
there are no ends to the dangers of life
on the water
for
nearly nine years now
I’ve watched wet hair trail your neck,
fall your brow, tumble your ears, writing
out these strange loops and gnarls
in a script so foreign that I, struggler
and scholar of words, have grumbled
my stumbling studies through, traced
my fingertips over
and over this squirming
primer, knowing only that I’ve failed
to translate the secrets of these psalms,
that each time they plunge and swirl
away from me like bathwater as your hair
writhes through the towel and writes
its furtive cyphers onto my palms and
that I have learned this unknowing is
my closest joy
AM
Sometime in the night, the bedroom door opens
wrongly, pulls six inches straight up, a low-budget effect
from a cheap sci-fi flick. In front of blinding light
the nine-year old louvres his head and one arm under
and tries to pull himself in. The pile of laundry nearby
on the floor makes me sigh—the painful failure
of adulting. Even in the grip of dream logic
I can’t help but criticize: easy symbolism, lousy
set dressing, lazy writing. The dirty clothes morph
into my father lying on his belly on the floor wearing
his now familiar post-retirement uniform: crisp blue
jeans, black leather vest and the eternally
changing checkered work shirt, thick black belt
and suspenders that remind me more of his fear
than of practicality. Head turned a bit past comfort,
his eyes find me in the darkness and I think, he
whispers, I am
no longer alive. When I start up,
there’s just enough
light to see the clothes on the floor. The bedroom door
is tightly closed. In the confusion, outside the window
a pronoun, disguised as an antecedent, refuses to tell
us which is the suit, which is the wearer. Cut to its precise
pattern, October remains no bigger than grief.
Kelly is soundly sleeping next to me and
the sound of should-be-asleep feet runs through
the house, possibly away from me.
Andy Weaver’s fourth book of poetry, The Loom (University of Calgary), was published in 2024. He was a finalist for the 2024 Vallum Chapbook Award, and his chapbook So/I (above/ground) was longlisted for the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize. He teaches poetry and creative writing at York University.