Bodega | What It Holds

On a Tuesday morning, in a shoal of spring light,

the answer to what’s left to learn about love? is my father

small beside the hundred-gallon kettle. I’m here

to see the microbrewery that he owns, returning

for the first time in many years, my chaperone—

among lambics & wort, he translates for me.

Beneath the kettle, his heart is the raft of wild iris

on the bank of the drainage creek outside that leads

away from here, & his heart is the flathead carp

in his fealty of silt. I love, too—sometimes like this,

& sometimes like this. My father wipes dust

from the little kettle window with his fingertips,

tracing circles until the grain becomes visible.

What It Holds