by Ann Keniston

I remade the landscape with an emphasis not on hunger but sufficiency.
The sufficiency of the light, the branches wrapped in snow.

From nowhere, a coyote appeared and ran by me fast.
Its passing made an almost streak, then tore the afternoon.

After my father died, I tried to tell the story of my life with him.
A neither-nor proposition, the fiction held lightly in truth’s hands.

I pretended I could fold him and put him in my pocket
like an icon to be revered later in private.

And took him out sometimes, not glittering but lacquered.
Sometimes the danger of disclosure overcomes the need to tell.

Years of slow decline create a declination.
The branches make a latticing with space left in between.

Enough, said the man in the fairy tale who is also my father.
Hush, and he put a finger to my lips.

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Ann Keniston is a poet, essayist, and critic interested in the relation of the creative to the scholarly and professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno. The author of several books including Somatic (Terrapin 2020), she has work forthcoming in Interim, New England Review, Tampa Review, and elsewhere.