Steph Ellen Feeney

 
The brief invisibility of fathers

I do not draw but here
I do. Heavy looping lines.

That scar of road.
Weeds through the stones.

The olive tree, persisting.
Wild fennel, and him bent

over it. The way that he
inhales the leaves.

Pours rice like rain.
Leaves pasta to hang.

Licks his thumb
to taste. His watchful grace.

I did not see but now
I do. What’s lost

then found between
the needing cries

of a baby waking,
just now, as I am to him:

drawn simply as the line
from stove to sky.