Grandpa falls asleep

William Francis Bauer

says he knows things he learned

in ports foreign and domestic

catholic boys aren’t supposed to know.

 

And being a sinner, he kneels,

eyes to heaven, and repents

for scourging children with rosary beads.

 

Falling asleep in his chair now,

he mutters about whores in San Diego,

oriental women folded in silks.

 

Men jump from the destroyer deck,

gulls smoked above.

Sharks flitter in PT boat wakes.

His children float through spires and pipes

of the Grand Canyon.

Spacemen bound across mushroom clouds.

Marie, Marie.

 

His glasses teeter on ears waving

out from laurel hair wrapped

about his sun-flecked pate—

slight sheen of oil, light fuzz, warm, taut skin—

so small for all of him.