Morning

I wake
before my wife
and daughter
and stare
at the ceiling,
then pull myself
up to sit
on the edge
of the bed.
Momentarily caught
in the dresser mirror,
the lean definition
of muscle and bone
is wearing away,
less imposing,
but smoother,
perhaps more graceful.
Seven hundred miles
away in Detroit,
my uncle’s second wife
sips her final
shallow breaths
and I rise,
lightheaded, finding
the morning’s equilibrium,
opening like a flower
in the constant
faceless breeze
that calls it
to the earth.

First published America (July 2, 1988).