MY FATHER IN CHICAGO

In my dream you're alive again,
I meet you walking Michigan Ave,
panhandling, coffee-stained cup
in your thick wind-worn mitts, nothing
big, just a few bucks, pocket change.
I dip in and search for coins, just
as you did at the Knob Hill Tavern
when I wanted a nickel for
the juke or a slim jim. You
pulled out a handful of dirty
coins, dust-lined rootbeer barrels,
ten penny nails, and sorted
them with a miser's patience
which I later discovered was
just fatigue and too much beer,
you wanted this nickel to mean
something, something you had no
words for, so you just handed me
the coin and I smelt its terrible
mettle, held its heat in my fingers
and placed it on my tongue to taste
the Indian. You drank beers with
carpenters, painters, plasterers,
Cookie, Emo and Jimmie,
black men and white men, men you'd
trust your life with, fuck the politics,
men who dragged their tired souls into
this tavern and confessed their fears
in hopes they might redeem themselves,
knowing their thick callused hands
betrayed the gentleness of prayer.
And so we meet here in the cold
winds of Chicago, father, your
eyes like knot-holes, fierce and distant,
we agree to the old arrangement,
I don't know you, you don't know me,
I reach for my wallet and pull out
some dollars and fold them in your
cup. Here mister, I say, get yourself
something just as you told Cookie
and Emo when they lost everything
and you walked by thinking It's a
shame, a goddamned shame, knowing
there was nothing else you could do
for them, you drove the truck back to
the Knob Hill and buried that in
drafts. Here mister I say, pretty sure
I don't slip when I look in your eyes
and say something like Here dad,
that raw grizzled face, carpenter
greens, then give yourself something,
knowing full well you won't, that
in this dream I keep walking
the cold sun of Michigan Ave,
staring at the slippery reflections
of people in the windows,
muttering to myself like an angry
street prophet, schizophrenic,
promising myself to never return,
to never look back, to never
dream this dream again.