Jules

I dreamed

he was my father;

that I came

from hard water

tucked in his timeline

between New York

and Hollywood,

a summer

of root crops

and soy beans,

wild oats sown

in a Hoosier farm girl.

I craved a king,

some kind of Ramses

from heaven,

to strut clean,

make good the role.

Maybe I understood

the Mongol,

the far-off Tartar,

as not so magnificent

a number as seven.

tk/January 2012

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Image:  Lee Friedlander