The moon's eyelid is half shut

the cross my father made me

dangles from the only nail left in the 

plaster, all the others having pulled 

from the wall and then pulled the wall with them.

I am not my father's daughter: there are many bent nails,
broken hammers, and dead plants in my possession.

I imagine if I were Basho I would look
to the mist over a mountain or the dew on a blossom
and know transcendence but I live in a city
and I am alone with the grain of the wood floor 

and the chill from the thin windows.

What they don't tell you when you lose someone 

is that it happens more than once.

I have lost my father every day for two years,

The plaster on the wall is waiting to crumble
and I am waiting to be fully returned to myself,
but still, there is the swollen eye of the moon,
the whittled night, the orange street lights
that dangle like fruit.

I am a thousand years old and Basho is my
mailman.