Buddha is not more strange
and impersonal
than you, o belly
waiting for the doctor's probe,
or you, phallus
wrinkled as an old crocodile
in a salt marsh.
Horn of schlemiel!
Uxorious! Imperative! Boaster! Father!
Outside the order of imagination
and the public interest.

Father! In what way father? Too old.
Can't tell him though.
Nor he me. Too much pain in the eyes.
His black obsidian gaze is closed to me
(may be just light refracted)
Why closed?
He can be fond and amiable
Dangerous to press for more

Engage in argument God help me!
Like an owl zeroing in on a mouse
aware too late of its exposure
he breaks from ambush with transfixing logic.

Yet he is sympathetic
The clarity I taught him
he has turned against me
and I am satisfied.

I say a man has integrity
For this he cares. And I
Looks at me long and deep,
a straight beam unavoidable.
And I to him.
I was made father for this.

Eyes clasped,
down we go into a mine
without a guide or map,
and damn the pinched face
of the Puritan
who holds us back.

Be careful though in table talk,
hold in the thought, " When I am gone. . . "
though all I mean is fact, faceless.
Can't bear to see him laid low
Careful not to give him pain,
I swear it as a father,
until the time when he and I
must put the figurative
prayer shawl
on together and join Abraham

Inventor of the wheel,
save us from cancer.

Bless this water.
I must bathe more often.