Drinking my beer while holding
my baby is the closest I come
to being Buddha—night after
night, neighborhoods of my liver
dying off while he outgrows
one onesie, then the next.
It’s like scoops of flickering
streetlight plus the gravel
we rode in on, all the fine bits
of rock and time I can fit
in a fist. It’s cross-eyed looks
we give each other at
the end of every sixer,
birds in blue who flock
to smoke, grass growing
in the patchy backyard where,
in the corner, I pour out
the last sips and hope
to grow a tree.
