A Chat with My Father

[MoonyLuna]

Sometimes when my old man tries to talk, his mind runs like a small boy
on a path through the woods.

You know the story. There's home to get to, and it's getting late,
only a little light still slicing through the trees.

And the boy has walked the path so many times,
he thinks he can do it in his sleep. But no. Some bird sounds off

way back in the woods, and he tries to ignore it, but it harps again,
and suddenly he's off the path, deeper and deeper

into the trees, wading the shadows, following the strangest
and most beautiful birdsong he's ever heard

until he crosses a stream and catches in the corner of his eye
a ruby as big as his fist, sure, a ruby or some rock

just as precious, and bends to pick it up when a wild dog ...
no, not a dog, when a wolf barks across a gully,

and he's beating his way through brush and briar, trailing
those barks and howls already fading

in the distance. All the while the woods have grown dark,
and suddenly he looks across the table,

and you see in his eyes that he's lost.


Copyright
David Bottoms

[MoonyLuna]

Featured Poet
David Bottoms


David Bottoms is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Waltzing through the Endtime, from Copper Canyon Press. Among his many awards are the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Levinson and the Frederick Bock prizes from Poetry, an Ingram Merrill Award, an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He holds the John B. and Elena Diaz-Versen Amos Distinguished Chair in English Letters at Georgia State University and serves as poet laureate of Georgia.