a poem by Daniel Hall

[novapsyche]

The Beanstalk

for my father


Night shift freed you up for an afternoon
with me. Beyond the shades, the world
dimmed and brightened, but our dusk held:
your chest rising beside me, mountainous,
loud with booming passages, a heartbeat
truer than my own vowing to go on
and on. The boy's troubles would go on and on,
if he couldn't remember between one telling
and the next worth of things, the treachery
of strangers, or to do what he was told.
Curled against you, eyes drifting upward
and inward, I would struggle to the end
of every story. And if you slept, the tale
would continue, embellishments unfurling,
leaflets arranged according to patterns
lost on me yet, up and up, without ending,
without change. Your breathing slowed until
you were snoring a regular thunder; inside me
all of summer clouded over, the trees
lifting and twisting as we ran for shelter
under them . . . . And I was falling, half-afraid
of my love, of waking blinded, forsaken,
with nothing to lead me, hand over hand,
leaf by leaf, back to that dark place.