"Loss"
He keeps ringing until I get up.
And then he comes in, he looks at the paper on the table.
No inspiration?
my father asks.
Look, he says, the lake is so frozen
that heavy trucks can go over it if they have
chains on their winter tires.
He keeps talking until I'm convinced
the world can be looked at from another perspective.
And I see people walking across the lake, each one
with a fish hook in their mouth.
I ask myself, which one of us will die first?
But only after he took off his jacket
to show the two bites of a clothespin
on the shoulders of his white shirt.