My father drank. He drank as a gut–punched boxer, secretly, in pain and trembling. I use the past tense knowingly. Father, age sixty–four, heart bursting, body cooling and forsaken. Sister, mother, and me, continuing as long as memory. My father tipping back the flat green bottles of wine, the brown cylinders. Bobbing as the liquid gurgled, he wiped the sandy–haired back of a hand over his children, children familiar with the ballad of the children in the wood.
I am unpacking my library now. Yes, I am. The books march up and down in their ranks, passing in review before a common disorder. Crates have been wrenched open, the air saturated with piles of volumes that are seeing daylight again after two years. A stillness settles in my heart and is carried to my hand. It is certainly not elegiac. But there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go, a rejoicing. Procession through the great house, procession through our own muddled country: ballad of my children, song staved with twine.
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