Griffith Observatory                                            

Love and its consequences? Wildness

as when I had no shame, or too little to sate

my own appetite, my annihilating mind?

Watching them, I do not know: two hawks

rising and crashing into each other, nearly

dying like twin shadows, or reflections

repeating in the river’s assault, or you

and I, so many years ago.

One digs its talons in the face of the other,

and I am like the shamed one, flying off,

disintegrating into smoke… But the meaning,

love, it’s the meaning I don’t want to know

any longer. It’s the not knowing, I think,

that brought us here. High wind, no rain.

My Father as Astronaut                                                  

Suspended a little left to the moon,

200,000 miles away, my father

sends me glitchy messages,

digital maps that track in red the route

of his voyage, farther, closer now, though

still no estimate of when he’s coming home,

though I know he might never. Less and less the father

I remember, like a warm and distant planet, unfamiliar,

yet glimmering with chances of water, he’s the father

he was when he left, as I am still the son I was. Some nights,

I pick a star and name it my father. Stationary,

fixed at the north, I speak to him

as I would God, whispering my light and guide,

my fortifying compass, so if I were

to step out and look up,

I know, he’d guide me closer,

though, like a star,

burning.