We

The money of  the mind is attention, maybe.

Which is not, initially, where I thought I’d begin,

but we’re already here now, using the language

of care and economy, though God-talk was truly

my first way in. Sustained attention is how we approach

a flesh and blood experience of the Divine I say to the

therapist nodding her head, only moments after

we disagree over whether her dress is coral or yellow

-based red, as opposed, of course, to a blue-based

red, like the square on her tartan scarf. My jacket

is the color of snow on television. My eyes

are as brown as my father’s when he lifted a stranger

off the ground he saw through the driver’s side window

beating a woman on Broadway. I am almost the age now

he was then, and am still studying the difference between

what a man proclaims in speech and what he says with his

body. Tomorrow marks another year on Earth for his third

son, and he is a father now, with a boy he is trying to teach

the benefits of apprehension. Who instead prefers to walk

on his hands, leap from the playground slide, climb

on countertops to watch TV from another room entirely.

Where does my influence, my aspiration, end and the child

begin? Who refashions the cosmos with his laughter.