His Shaved-Faced Son

Worm Jacob went about

with knives beneath his skin,

to the city where snow fell

while he had slept.

Snow fell in Boston

and I was not there,

on Philadelphia in the night,

and Worm Jacob did not see.

Snow is and is not grace,

though it writes in

signs we cannot read

and blots out our uncovered heads.

Behold as he reaches out, Worm Jacob

and his span of fingers, reaches

out for the lost bodies of

his youth, intending

but to say “I wish

that I were otherwise, I wish

that it were not—”