I had a clock I woke all day
in hiccuped white embattled cries
I broke my glasses on the street
to blind my sense of dignity
and wrapped the sheets as knocking on
a filmy door as knocking on
a rough body of water
a dust sheet pinned over
a soft pedal organ I once
moaned long over life
and my palm fitted most of my son it was as if
some discord kept my feet airborne
and my head planted down in quartz

Jonathan Thirkield, Fatherland XI: “Father’s Song”, in The Waker’s Corridor: Poems