to my son, how it’s like carrying
a dream as you wander the world.
But water clouds the windows again,
and he wants to know how to go on
living, how to find his way when
no surface is safe from the weather. 

He rubs the fog from the glass,
watches the rivulets riot
across the pane, and by the way
who named you ocean, he says,
I always imagined you as fire.
The panicked water on the glass blurs
what is left of our barb-wired future. 

It’s strange to be old and young
at the same time, I reply, certain
this is not the answer he wants
so I try again: You look to me
as a river seeking its beginning,
but I am its end, and I look to you
as a river seeking its end,
but you are its beginning. 

All rivers are lonely, he says,
as we circle each other, and
this fury of rain pounding
the hours is what happens when
you call the sun by another name. 

Will I always have to endure
the landscape before me, he asks
without turning from his spot
in front of the window.
Back and forth. Back and forth
each recalling half the music. 

Look, I tell him. Look at the way
the water streams like a mendicant’s
map, or the first poem we spoke
together on the day you were born.
Do you remember? Do you hear it, still?