In my life
your life has not been sterile
and the quiet art of my composure fails
at your cleaned hands
that seem not the father's hands
that raised me from this earth
at five o'clock homecomings,
leaving their talisman prints;
not my father's hands,
that after soap and water,
fed us all
still rimmed with
dark lines of life
lived apart from me.
My composure fails:
I know you will be my father
for only a time,
but I will always be your child.