Your father is stuck in the past, an oxbow lake

left behind in the curve of time’s waste. Your grief

is anchored to his death, a line of memories unspooling

behind you as you drift forward in the river’s searching.

Like water tipped from a cup carried to bed, or the splash

on the bathroom tile from a too-full tub, it is hard to gather

your sadness without spilling more of it, a measure

of a body bound only by the negative space it brims.

Each day is a new attempt to survey grief’s coursing,

each food-triggered memory, each line of music heard

in his nobody’s-watching voice. And it’s impossible to tell

which life supplies your sorrow, his rigored past, or his future,

evaporated. You’re living every day in new depths,

each waking a plumb line fed into the dark body

surrounding you. But to see how deep the river really runs,

you will need to be something other than the river.