everybody had a father even if their father's gone even if they never knew him they had one. my sister made a painting of him with a red dog, his body was smoke. i did a word picture of him in the kitchen of his bluestone mansion, a beeswax figure, spine hunched like a dowsing rod, no, a fishing rod, his line caught on a snag while musing on the one that got away. whatever i remember in the present in the back of my memory i remember him.