His Father’s Whistle

For hours the boy fought sleep,

strained against the whir of cicadas, moths

at the screens bumbling, night’s

blue breezes, to hear out on the country road

his father’s car rumbling in gravel.

He watched for the sweep of headlights

on the ceiling, a quick rush down

the driveway, then footsteps barely audible

over the lawn, his father’s whistle.

Half a verse, a sliver of chorus, and his father was in

the house, quiet, the boy already drifting

in the night, asleep before the hand caressed his face.

It seemed to the boy that his life would be this way

forever, that out of the murmuring shadows,

the terror of distance, the danger of all

he did not know, there would come an order

like the one a melody imposed upon silence,

his father’s whistle among night sounds,

as though breath, a song,

and a boy’s simple fear of the dark,

were a man’s only reasons for whistling.