In the Photo

My father’s father is preaching, 
one palm raised, the book he believed 
was the language of creation 
held reverently in his hand the way 
one cradles a dying thing close, 
those long fingers that could sunder
the small, hardened brain of a walnut 
to soft meat caressing its leather. 
Did he hold my wailing head 
this fervently, my supple skull
crammed with its nascent fold
of blank pages? Every time I feel 
an urge to pray I remember touching 
his icy, powdered face. My sister 
ensconced in that highchair of arms. 
Her kindergartener’s grief. For weeks 
I bunked in the bubble gum pink cathedral 
of her room, mine so foggy with death 
a mural of sailboats across one wall bobbed 
atop its water. There on a tide of sheets 
my father’s father slipped out to sea, 
eating the bread of himself until 
only a heart shadowed the memory 
of body. I didn’t understand his desire 
to not taste then, why every morning 
my mother placed each fresh temptation 
of apple atop that book like an offering 
to the bed. The vigils the living keep. 
I kissed the crackling parchment of him 
before school, snuck the gift pressed 
to my palm like forbidden knowledge 
onto a teacher’s desk. What isn’t written 
about any genesis is how quiet it is 
after a flood. The way the skies clear. 
Just a few days ago that sodden cradle  
in the street had rocked its newborn, 
the rain falling and falling outside. 
I want to say to him: do not preach 
to me of doves. I want to know why 
they drowned, lullabies in their mouths.  
Why any faithful disciple still follows
the light of their once sun even after
it absconds from heaven.