Always
My father sang Always
as though he was handling
something delicate,
something his large hard hands,
agricultural,
might easily break,
so he sang gently,
wooing the song politely
out of its whorled shell.
His pitch was imperfect,
his ear was fallible,
his tenor less than certain,
and sometimes the tune skittered
like an ungainly beast
on too smooth a surface,
but he sang on, holding
that tune so carefully -
a humdrum melody
something like a psalm,
an efflorescence
of the working day.
