My Father as Weather Formation

Sometimes when a man moves his mouth, breath

comes out, breath that freezes in the prickly air,

only breath, no sounds. Like my father driving us

to the woods: me, baby sister, and mother, squeezed

beside him, shivering on the seat. Sometimes I look

and look at his whip-like body, his hooded eyes

that say to me he’s half-lizard, his transformation

incomplete. I tell my sister, he talks in the language

of smoke. My mother whispers, chestnut, fir,

mirabelle while my father veers from tree to tree.

He presses his hand to the bark, rips a leaf, scribbles,

picks a thread from his tweed coat (its sleeve

scours my cheek, becomes burlap in memory),

bites a spotted plum in half, exposing the stone that glistens

like the pig hearts I saw, on tiptoe, at the butchery.

Then his whims enslave him. He stuffs his valise

with jars and papers, flees to the city. Mother blames

his fever, says he’ll die. I dream he eats the char-

woman’s lye to poison himself clean, soft

jellyfish man answering his gloom. Man of fidgets

and glances, soon to appear in the clouds as beasts

for me to name, and fall on his woods like snow.