March 22, 2017Spin
One of those nights when I wake with a start,
thinking I have heard my daughter calling my name,
though she is many miles away and many years
from sleeping in my home. I would like to believe
that via some unbroken remnant of a father-
daughter psychic bond, she is sitting upright
in her own bed at this very moment, thinking of me,
thinking how she would ask me to check the closet
for monsters or bring her a glass of water or find
a way to get rid of the blind date she has caught
a glimpse of as he waits in the front foyer. The world
should have this kind of magic, I think. It should not
be some burble of apnea that has me wide awake
now, wide aware of all the trucks or boulders,
bad hearts or sadnesses that have pinned my children
beneath them, all the times I could not summon
that freakish, parental adrenaline that should have
set them free. I’ve heard how Einstein struggled
to believe in god, to explain the magic that allows
two entangled photons to respond to each other
almost simultaneously, even reaching back to the past,
so that from great distances they keep on responding
somehow, even when one, or the other, has gone.
from #54 - Winter 2016