My Father Sings Like a Crow
Many of us have been worried about our parents or other loved ones. This poem is an ode to the poet's father, but you can also relate it to your spouse, your patient, or anyone you are hoping will stay safe and healthy tonight.
My Father Sings Like a Crow
by C. L. O'Dell
My father is a lamp, a boy, is two fathers: his own
and a wolf father. Me, other kids, camp
around his flame; night dissolves like snow on his skin.
A whole life lives in each fist of my father
the way a burning city lives in a firefly’s gut. It’s there,
a faint light cradling a chicken egg, clutching an axe,
raising a newborn’s almost see-through body.
There is an animal looking back and leaping forward
inside him. My father carries a shadow speckled
with the soot of dawn, and drags a darker one.
There is a boy there building everything, and he is free,
and when he is lost he burns down a mountain
or sings like a crow. But he is never lost.
