My father naked in the photo, young
again, crouched among rocks and water. It's an island,
a time so long ago he is thin,

His difficulties the danger putting one
  foot past the other impossible
      the downcast eye captured by

1.

Max, I lean a photo of Josephine Baker
in this box lined with black construction paper,

Two vases of flowers squarely on the ledge
stare out as though they regret the countryside,
mean to ignore you squinting above the edge

I. After the Fall

Standing in the midst of my illness
alone. Psychiatrist gone. The work

My Christian name you ask? It is Joseph Ignace.
I fell from my mother’s womb while she walked,
a nightly stroll around the neighborhood

a God uncreated or else a God withdrawn
a God comprehended is no God

I'm not convinced that woman wanted him
ever to come back home. She had her business
in tapestries, those three-hour meals with men,

They are so busy and self-involved as I hear them muttering in the distance
that they strike me sometimes as sheer marvels:
the dishwasher filling its huge blue gullet—a cluck from the timer,

Check yellow. It must be kept for the center
of flowers and
other intense moments, not