Some nights the radiator taps out messages from the dead. They signal
in a mortuary Morse code I don't recognize.
                                                          Long, Long Short.
I wake, then doze, hoping for a telegram
I can understand.
                           Short, Short, Long.

I do not get up for the snow's footfall, for the door with its chattering
hinge, when the pipes bang the brickwork I ignore them.
                                                                          I am trying to go back
into a dream where he speaks in the dark, exchanging
dumb pleasantries,
                             "Got the tulips in last week."

as if his daughter's doglilly bulbs were a mandala
containing all truth. We make small talk
                                                     about travel, uncles, the market. My ears

fill up with the words he had no time for
all the time before. I listen, my hair on end, galvanized.
                                                               Awake, I imagine elaborate messages

scratched in the mortar, scuttlebutt from the departed. What does he want
me to know? How to get to him? How to travel
                            alone in my uncured bag of skin?

Does he sing directions into the radiator? I'll meet him at the jai alai palace.
Anywhere he wants. I know which streetcars run.
                                  I'm only waiting to touch his shadow

beyond the fence, watching for him to bend over and worry the flakes
with his toe bones, listening for him to tap out
                                                        the unfamiliar word, Father.