i. Goldfish Bowl
The way this feels may be the way
the goldfish felt the day that Gabe,
at two, more quickly than we knew
got his hands around a glass deep
and gold with twenty-year Ardbeg
and plopped it neatly in their bowl;
one flipping out in an upturned
tumbler, one ranging crazed in all
that lonely space, and both of them
astonishingly drinking in
the sour draught in their atmosphere.
from Take This One to Bed
(Valley Press, October 2016)