Moments gather, intimate: familiar pavement, baby shit.
Hearts re-break along old lines. Like spreading urine stains.
Like fat fingers flailing in vain attempts to grasp a toy.
Like my seven year old walkman, it's immutable trademark:
Hiss so loud that music is rendered distant, still.

It is so grotesque. It's so touching.
It's so like and unlike things before.
These cow-eyed babies drool.
I touch their hands and faces tenderly and hold them close.

They unwittingly comply with sleep.
I steal back spurious love.
They stain my black shirt a darker black.

Execute these endless feedings, diapers, laundry, baths.
Dad, they pay me now for all the things that you held back