Days Before the Birth of Drumming

 
The son I fathered two lifetimes ago

rarely visits anymore
Not in the form of dancing blue spheres

Nor as a curve billed thresher going

on and on about the war
with far too few ceasefires and all the lambs

we slaughtered together because

death isn’t a guest but a member
of every god fearing household as fathers

born in fallow bean fields love

to say when not scolding the back door for
sticking or reminding his right

hand never to feed apple slices

to ghosts it barely knows bearing news
of a warm feeling coming not from the arroyo

or the roof but somewhere much closer