In Its Own Depth

No one drives back from the market 
and shouts, “Help me with the groceries. 
Careful with the eggs.”

This much the son misses him 
in the beginning, and then 
the dark stairs descend deeper, 
and a dim light can be seen 
way up there, and the feeling escalates.

In the river went the ashes; in 
the sky, smoke. This morning 
it chokes the son.

He closes the windows, but not before 
a sparrow oozes inside and flies around 
until the room inverts into a vortex, 
until the mind concedes that its canoe 
will sink in its own depth.

.

.