Michael Homolka
A New Father, My Mind Wanders the Seasons
The quartet at the rotunda—porkpie hats and linen shirts—
all we have, my son and I, in the scattered January snow
are depressions in air from their bodies swaying through summer.
Buses pass along the Hudson, worth pointing out as if new
to the world, though even in A.’s world they’re not new.
I hold up a blueberry and he opens his mouth
wide as the baby robin’s raw red gullet by the bridle path
two decades ago with my mother. Not having that moment
back feels excruciating, but the present is already so bloated.
I remember thinking, rounding the reservoir as blossoms emerged,
how crazy it is that the mother robin had only experienced
the breaking of winter once before, its thirty-month
lifespan flooding into the string wriggling over her young.
I wish I could name what I feel for my son. Beyond the fragility.
Michael Homolka reads “A New Father, My Mind Wanders the Seasons”
Michael Homolka is the author of Antiquity (Sarabande, 2016). His poems have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, Quarterly West, Prairie Schooner, Agni, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily. A graduate of Bennington College’s MFA program, he currently teaches high school students in New York City.