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Matt W. Miller
Of the Act of the Mind

I want a brighter verse for this
memory as slippery

as light sliding across our ceiling
from a car driving down

Bowl Road one winter night past
supper it’s of my father

I can’t see him I am lying
on his chest my right cheek

buried in blue flannel I am
half in a sleep half in the pale blue

of a color Zenith in the old house
in Chelmsford where still

I feel my body rise and lower
and rise then lower rise and lower

upon his breath with the mechanical
constancy of the music box

snow globe he bought at an airport
or our kitchen clock or one day

his ventilator then something like water
that is not water fills my lungs

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