The Cadences

for Jeff Oaks

Is it possible those midnight fights, those paternal rants, 

the resolute flutes of our mothers interjecting, made us poets? 

Does anything approach the condition of poetry 

more than drunken monologues, with their high winds, 

clatter-hail, momentary patter approaching reason, 

colossal crescendos, secondary pleas? 

I’ve known a wailing baby, compulsively barking dogs. 

When those fell to quiet: stanza breaks. 

But when the ranting of a father ends, 

when the beast of rage is truly finally asleep—

amid the breathing of the heating vents, the static 

in the blankets, the lidding of the mother’s eyes— 

the long lines wriggle out like earthworms after rain, 

staining the pavement with their earnestness.