Timothy Cook
He was the melting pot, the saucepan
heating marinara for pouring over
ziti & meat that weeks earlier
grazed outside his window. He was tall
as the Hancock but more refined, God
in his every detail. Stride long
as Lake Shore Drive & straight
as an old crow flies, he easily two-stepped
while twirling an umbrella to
North Carolina. Father
buried with hundreds of men
at the bottom of the ocean he invented
for himself manhood. He is alive
in this cracked & blurry photograph,
sturdy in an undershirt before rocks
& a Skylark. He is a model
custom made with a longer stroke
& smaller bore allowing for
lower-end torque, the canary
with dust-fangled feathers dangling
within a cage at the end of
the mine, the cigarette after
a breath mint, the flask swig after
brushed teeth. See him sipping whiskey
neat, see him high & higher still
springing like a cloud of fire, see him
hanging in a Swannanoa attic, buckskin belt
singeing his impeccably slender neck.