Honestly I Hardly Think of Him at All

What I thought might come
of this I can’t recall.

I rarely dreamt of safety
and never forgot how the wax

melts when I fly too high,
the sky there uncluttered by restraint.

I am torched.
I am metal I melt I am molten.

How blue my father’s eyes burned,
like a welder’s acetylene flame,

the 6,000⁰ surface
of the sun. I wished him to sleep

on blue glass the color of his eyes
and wake suddenly afire.

None of that matters yet still
l fall through the atmosphere.

Still come down here.
Every time.

 
Michael Milligan has worked as a construction laborer, migrant fruit and grape picker, homestead farmer, and graphic arts production manager. He took his MFA in Creative Writing at Bennington College, thereby joining the teeming mass of writers with degrees of dubious cachet. He was co-founder of Poetry Oasis in Worcester MA and was co-editor of Diner. His book reviews, fiction, and poems have appeared in Agni, The New Orleans Review, The Valparaiso Review, Chaffin Journal, and others.