À La Carte: To guide my son to sleep

I shut his blue eyes,
my hand still enough

to keep each iris closed.
I have learned both

to tie a curtain and silence
a candle with a thumb;

to dictate light these moments
I am most my father.

The night I stopped needing
his shadow beside my bed,

there was no protest: a lamp
buzzing in the hall; briefly,

a bow of slats beneath
his heavy gait. For years,

he must have rehearsed
the performance I study—

the way to exit a bedroom
quieter than a ghostlight.

Soon, my son could reach
for the darkness on his own.

I will listen for the snap
of an off switch, quieter

than a cricket’s torment
bottled in the basement.

It can’t be long before
I, too, descend an infinite

staircase, each wood buckle
fainter than the last, where,

eyes closed, I hear my father
step a little farther away.