Night To Remember

I want to forget that night. I want life
to be a smooth stream. One of quiet
and purpose. However, rivers find rocks
and cause a collapsing sound, a rush
gathering strength and speed to get elsewhere.

I do not want to remember my father
saying, “Never straighten a crooked road.”
My father would say odd things like that.
We would stifle his words like a campfire,
but his words would go ashen and seethe.

Perhaps he was trying out his voice,
see if it still fit him like matches in a box.
We would blink at his outbursts.
We never understood them
and while we analyzed them
he had moved like a tentative deer
to another strange idea, nibble on it.

He said, “Never let rain fall upwards.”
and sure enough, that night it rained up.
It was as if he had commanded it.

He did not talk like that all of the time.
We were concerned if this was genetic.
You’d never know when a switch
would flip, until his eyes tilted.

Sometimes he would thrash around
like a black bear tossing in trash cans.

The night he died, he said,
“It is never like they said it would be;
it is not a grand ballroom.”