Swallowed
In the dream there was an old man's head on a baby's body,
there were animals dancing and a sick or dying horse.
We escaped the house at night, there was a descent
into a cave, the end of a tunnel, being eaten by dogs,
one's own funeral, and a woman who swallowed teeth.
Because of all these things I could not look you in the eye
that morning when you asked me how I was.
I could only walk by you and pretend not to cry
at the awful beauty of the world.
My Father's Ashes And Duke Ellington
And then the door to the unexplained
shut for good
and then it was summer again
and then pieces of him were scattered across oceans
from here to Georgia because that's the way he wanted it
and then jazz played through the speakers outside
the shopping mall while I sat in my car and wept under the sun.
Adam Chambers lives in Connecticut with his wife and four children. The one-time long-distance truck driver is now enrolled full time in the MFA poetry program at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. contact
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