We hear my father’s bare feet shuffle
down the night hallway, see his shape —
a ruined edifice — shadow the doorway.
We feel him standing there, a grey form 
staring, blank, into the darkness
of our half-sleep. We hear him shuffle
off again, back toward his bedroom,
back toward Mother, savoring
sleep’s brief respite.
 
When Dad was young he drove the spray rig,
two arms reaching over rows of flowering citrus
in a shower of chemicals that covered 
and soaked him. At sundown he came home.
The house shook to the slam of the door,
his shirt and khakis stained orange, reeking
of the poison that killed insects but left
the perfect fruit to flourish. The smell lingered 
on his body for days in spite of nightly showers.
 
My five-year old draws Grandpa in shaky lines
to show the tremor. Disease makes a mask
of my father’s face; his eyes look out 
like windows of a vacant building. This 
was the man who filled our lives like a raging wind 
and left behind his trembling shell.
 
He appears later at the end of the hallway, 
a haze of swirling lights that come on odd occasions 
until we beg him to stay away. I never see 
his ghost except in my own mirror, 
but when I catch the aroma of lemon blossoms
wafting through my world in spring I sense 
the essence of him, the man who put me 
in this world, the man who gave me half myself, 
the man we sometimes used to wish 
we did not know.

After work I climb the tall streets
of my neighborhood, up down up down,
toward home, away again, past the bar
that floods the sidewalk with the smell
of despair, up this hill and down the next,
past the drunks on the corner, past
the homeless Rastafarian, up one hill
and down another, past angry kids
with pins in lips. My head swirls
with thoughts that I know are stupid, 
dangerous and wrong, but still 
they swirl around, around, up one street
and down until finally, just to stop
the madness I make my way to my own
door and into a sea where love roils --
pure for the child, sharp and painful
for the man who helped to make him.
I turn the knob and wade into the churning
waters of my terrible mistake.

Seasonless San Francisco afternoon, 
me and Charlie Ray, a North Beach café.
He starts the juke box – Lay Lady Lay –
and dances me to the thin middle 
of the black and white tiled floor,
sunlight slanting through, muffled 
 
and wan. We know it is wrong but 
there we are, fantasies for each other,
in a weak pretense of romance 
where we imagine we can get 
what we need, hurt no one, and hope 
to see relief from hunger and regret 
 
in the soft afternoon light of an empty 
café while fog swells over the ocean, 
poised to fill the restless streets
with its thick concealing balm.