A Gift Poem by W.M. Rivera

Fathers come and go; mine just went it seems
long ago; blood and little else between us:

the watch unfastened from his wrist in Coyoacán
he gave to me when we first met that once…

stopped working years ago. i must have tossed it. Things
pop up from time to time, not always evident
the way some things are always there. Verhaeren’s poem
tells how the living clock runs up
then quickly down a stairwell built of hours…days.