Another Sunday late spring, and late again—for nothing.
I head to the john for some morning relief—
too much worrying all night long that I worry too much.
When a wasp—maybe a mud dauber—scary and big, 
but sort of graceful, I’d say, 
if my pants weren’t down—walks right over the sill, 
with a sort of proud shuffle, as if he owned it still, 
and right through the hole in the screen 
the former proprietor never got around to fix. 
 
My own fault, I admit—surely not the last time today.
But what is there to do, a coward at heart?
It’s best to wait till almost dark 
and they’re back in their nests, cozy and wasp-warm 
and you can sneak up with chemical foam in a can
and watch with joy as you spray, and they try to get away,
then dizzy to the ground,
like Zeros shot down by the good guys 
at the end of Flying Tigers.
 
But now he takes to the air and lights on the mirror
to have a closer look. Not out of pride,
but to examine himself for damage, 
another tough day in the world of whatever wasps do,
and I can almost hear him say a world-weary, Oh boy, Oh boy, Oh boy.
Then looks my way as I’m pulling up my pants,
and seems sort of threatening 
but not really interested in me, 
just tired of caring about anything at all.  
 
I take no chances, though, and quickly finish my business, 
zip and run for the door, and shut it tight behind me
as if this whole thing never happened,
that it isn’t another Father’s Day,
and I’m doomed to miss him again 
today, more than ever.

My father liked his coffee hot,
would send it back to the kitchen
with a flick of his hand
if steam didn’t rise from the surface 
like a river where the jungle cats come down 
to mark their territory and wait.
I was the boy who wanted to bolt,
or at least for all this silent tearing  
to be done.

But a grown woman can’t run away—
all my mother could do 
was purse her lips, steam silently, 
try to make like everything was fine.
My father laughed, that confidential laugh,
practiced so long in coffee shops 
where he’d try to close the deal,
and told the one he told and told again: 

	The boy didn’t speak his entire life.  
	When he turned twenty, he yelled, This coffee’s cold!
	All these years, why didn’t you speak? his father asked, amazed. 
	The boy replied, Up till now, everything’s been fine.

Me, I turned twenty and ran like hell.  
Everything’s been fine ever since,
except, sometimes, the coffee’s too hot—
and I have no story to swap for the silence.
I wait for it to cool.