He says, Hello, Uncle David, or Goodbye,
Uncle David, as he leans his whole body
into the entirety of mine. But he always asks
my name first, not important enough
to remember, but significant enough to get
right. He is sure there is only one way
to do everything. If I don’t follow the pattern,
the rules, he reminds me. Sometimes,
he screams until I give in. How he survives
this world, I cannot say. Rivers change
course. They flood. Storms take us
by surprise, midday and midnight,
our world rearranged. When I sing
the wrong word, the wrong note,
the wrong key, he tells me to stop.
Sometimes, he won’t let me sing at all.
It’s not my normal voice. There are days
I don’t like him. Let me say that
again. There are days I don’t like him.
But I only see him a few times a year.
And when he hugs me, he means it.
As though we were an ocean, stilled,
without the tug of an everchanging moon.
-David B. Prather
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