Openings

When Dad took his glasses off, which was rarely,
he’d rub his face so hard with both big hands
I thought he wanted to erase his features,
press those weary blue eyes into his head,
flatten that nose and wipe away that grimace
and whisk away the whiskers and new wrinkles

but he never did, he always came back Dad:

sometimes I’d watch him nap, his worn glasses
watching us both from the bedside table,
a little me bending in his thick lenses
to study those twin deep oval bruises
on either side of the bridge of his nose,
the marks so dark they looked like openings

that he might breathe through in some other life.

:: Michael McFee, Earthly (2001)