rituals

as a wedding gift I was given
a book of Tibetan wisdom
a single epigraph for each day
of the year, to offset an image
of Buddhist Shangri-La

when my father visits he scans
through the volume for the pictures,
skipping over words; when I walk
past it’s no longer October 13th
a month out from my son’s birth

dog-eared to a page of street
children marking March &
the winter chill, I restore
the calendar back to today’s date
return to find the book opened

to a spread of Himalayan
mountains, my father moving
backwards, resists time