Before the solstice, I dreamt of a tsunami,
the shoreline pulled back like a brazen woman,
exposing her shells and seaweeds, and no one
stopped the party to run to higher ground.
Unlike the spiders who climbed and wove blankets
of high web across Victoria after the floods.
Here, I save my shower water, wipe webs from my rafters,
my bicycle, my car’s rearview mirror.
When we are infants, Lacan said, we believe
everyone is an extension of ourselves.
We do not understand why we cannot meet
our unspoken needs.
On Father’s Day, I drove and shopped and cleaned.
And as I scrubbed debris of my father’s body
from his shower, his toilet, we listened to the radio.
My yellow gloves paused, my dad’s breath periodically
fluttering in a half-snore as I heard
an Afghan refugee speak of her father’s torture,
the extraordinary measures he took to ensure
her safety and passage to this country.
I wiped tears and for a moment, watched
my own sleeping father.
I think of my Australian friend’s forced separation from her Irish
dad,
her husband’s losses of both parents during this pandemic.
These are the small silver threads tethering us—
empathy and gratitude.
A mother deer and her two fawns come
to eat my apples that drop to the dry, dry earth.
