Cigarette butts from the gutter.
Towels the kids leave
on the bathroom floor.

The dish rag that’s always sliding off
the faucet’s swooped neck.

All matter of crumbs, large
and microscopic.

Strands of hair from my wife’s shoulder –
which she hates.

What else can I do?

My father’s 95, has zero peripheral
vision, vertigo, lives alone
3,000 miles away, and keeps falling

in my mind. The soap
that slipped out of its dish again.

And that shadow
on the carpet I bend for

convinced it’s something else.

Poem appeared in 32 Poems