Little Ned, stout and beautiful
as a manzanita twig, dream
drinker, how your violin
must have jumped at those weddings.
Deep, those small handsome eyes
blue as obsidian, as blue water,
that follow me with plain approval
and, marvel of my life, admire
like Galileo the crisp heavens.

That first glimpse of you
sullen behind fat glass, morose
beneath white fluorescence
gave you away, my impatient lamb,
as if not one reliable nurse
could be found with smock full
of explosives or inconspicuous beret,
traveling circus to get you out of there.

I apologize for those first
six months away, appearances
and disappearances as if you could
recognize my boat from wherever
the river boomed, its flag
or ineffable green of the levee
letting me pass home to you heavy
with a week’s caul of vigilance
unwashed by a drink or kiss,
nervous and unsteady from sea legs.

My merry son, believe me
when I tell you I’ve risked
everything to write this
poem for you, even the gift itself.
When I was a schoolteacher and a cook
still the poem had to be first of all.
Maybe I’ll become an actor
or take my shirt off again in some
framing yard, pine dust and beer
fragrance in my flesh at evening,
before you’ll read my message to you here.

Now in Fresno a year and a half
later if I show you olive groves
and the wordless stars will you remember
New Orleans with its verdant neighborhoods
or point delicately into the chameleon’s
hiding place as if there
was another little boy’s sign?