Dumb Incantation

In December the valley was covered
with clouds the color of ink-soaked
cotton. Early in January, the lid

was off and a fierce silver sun
rocked across the sky. The detention center
halls were not unearthly green. The pale

blue-grey walls, cream-colored
metal grates, the men shifting around
a hive of orange suits, yellow suits,

a few chalk-blue ones. Something
I would ask about when it was my turn.
But when my brother handed the grey phone

to me and I took it, and set my eyes
on my father’s face, and he set his two eyes,
the good one going bad and the black one,

and he sent them to the wall behind me,
I said nothing. He began talking
about the TV on Sundays, the food,

his cellmates, the hour for exercise.
The slate of his face, the pepper-black
stubble, the black of his eye that

would bleach out to vein-blue
before he was released, I said okay.
Good. Great. School’s fine. And

I felt then, later though I thought
I was wrong, that not even the glass, or
the suit, the eye, the age, the crime,

or this dread would ever separate us,
I would follow him there in my time through
the routine of risk & failure. The phone

was cut. Time was up. He had not reached what
he was working up to. He made the I Love You
sign with his hand, straining to hold

his ring finger down, and slapped it against
the layers of glass and plastics, pounding out
some dumb incantation, saying something I couldn’t hear.