Somewhere, my father drinks from veins
of fallen leaves, he termites
the downed logs of his life. The fire that will take
him starts as smoke rising
from pine-litter. He knows he can’t survive,
so he’s been leaving empty vodka bottles on the floor of his truck,
answering the phone high, signaling us
to say what we need to say
and leave him. We see the smoke,
but we don’t leave, and we can’t say everything. Instead,
I filter inhales through my shirt and imagine
switch-backing ashy hillsides
to practice forgiveness. I wonder how
the displaced in California will forgive
the aerated limbs of dead oaks and the late-summer
wind that carried embers up to their roofs.
No matter how many lies addicts tell us, an overdose is
an act of honesty. In time, it seems as natural as a sapling.
And who couldn’t forgive a sapling, even as it grows in ash,
even if it becomes embers in the wind.
Erik Wilbur 