by Matthew Miller
I’m sipping tea this afternoon. Some sons nap.
Another asks, Daddy, spell special for me.
I have no letters to spell special for me.
But words for him: apprentices and spaces.
Certainty spawns danger in novel spaces.
New wine demands new wineskins, not more patches.
I want to walk in soft grass, not burnt patches,
so I overwater brown until it’s smooth
and squashy. I sink in like a pen that’s smooth,
like my hand sliding across unwrinkled thighs.
I wish I was young again, unwrinkled eyes
on watermelon slices, unsure what God says.
You can’t want wrongly with me, God says.
In wells, I find thirst; sipping while some sons nap.
Matthew Miller teaches social studies, swings tennis rackets, and writes poetry – hoping to create home. He lives beside a dilapidating orchard in Indiana, and tries to shape the dead trees into playhouses for his four boys. He secretly the groundhogs, rabbits, and cardinals that share the orchard’s fruits.