You don’t have to be asleep to dream. At any time,
cue the untruths. You can believe, for instance,
that your dead father isn’t dead anymore.
There is the doorbell clanging and your one-year-old
screeching Granddaddy!, lurching and running
to the banister to risk his life looking over,
and yes, there is a curving staircase, partially awash
in sun, and your father skipping stairs,
grinning gold tooth, growling Hey Meathead
to his yelping grandson. Your unslept story freezes
right here, with his bony brown face upturned,
you and your leaping baby looking down at him.
The clock locks on this.
The raucous welcome stops, he does not take
another step, nothing moves but his face,
slipping out of sun into dead again. I am alone
in my office, terrified of conjuring him,
but there is the clanging, the boy screeching,
the gold tooth, those slats of June, the son,
the father, the daughter seeing all of what has
already happened happening,
and the soft remembered thud of wingtips.