The Year My Father Died

Everything is in bloom.

Begins with me giving my song

to a girl

who likes girls.

Is this not how the body comes

to the underground language of silence,

bliss then reticent ash? Somewhere in the wildness

of my life, a village weaver prods. Even now your sizeable head, 

scalp stiffened from years of carrying spiky bunches of palm fruit

so your younger brother could afford technical school.

Even now your carbonized umber eyes, how you always mean 

everything you did not say.

Once in the rib cage of darkness, nine & a half, I thought 

malaria would cull me

until you raced, machete in hand,

into the rainforest & came back with barks

& roots that kept my frail body from shattering. 

Did I thank you afterwards or fall asleep?

There is this seedless cry. The fungus green

of this month, my father, how could it mean go?