when ashes in the courtyard sat and birds
went sorrowing for crumbs and children cried
for pennies in the black snow and the words
of “Jesus loves me” rose, my father died;
my father sailed away out of the night
of public dole and private rage, his eyes,
his ruined eyes, shut down, and all their light
hired in the sun and hammered down the skies:
and I shall not forget, never at all,
the whispers, Bibles, roses on the door,
the noon my sister rocked a wounded doll
beside a pile of want ads on the floor;
and stealing out upon the snows around
I made a man a city plow struck down.