He tells the wife when wild loons call
onscreen from lakes where they don’t live.

Measuring each morsel
the father spends his waking days:

A turkey sandwich. Beans and rice.
A Fuji apple, red and gold.

He folds the page of the novel:
Venus misplaced, straight overhead.

He wants all things
                                to be more right.

Upstairs, the daughters chirp
and dip their wings: another day.

And what could he name this always,
this need to count his ups and downs?

Above the marsh-side sycamore,
in daybreak blue, a fading moon.

In his notebook, the father writes:
same body,
                                different light.