" Barometer "
after Sharon Olds
Being the grandson of a woman
who left her children at the orphanage,
who wouldn’t take them home again
until they could pay their own way,
whose family
refused to give her food enough
to feed five hungry mouths
(one newborn still suckling her breast)
after her husband died,
I am not like other fathers.
I wake in the night to sneak into my oldest son’s room,
touch the forests of his hair, hear the wind
move through the branches of his lungs;
to creep
into my middle son’s to see the smile
that blooms like a night flower on his lips
in the blue glow of a lava lamp;
to slip
into my daughter’s to glimpse
her face haloed in its nest of blankets,
listen to the hummingbird fluttering in her throat.
I give them everything,
everything I ever had and didn’t have,
as if I were a barometer always pointed to stormy weather.
© 2004 Jim Doss
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