Fatherly Advice

Mark Jodon

May 26, 2024

My desk faces the windows in the front 

bedroom on the second story of my home.

The windows are filled with my neighbor’s pines, 

six towering trunks, limbs laden with green needles 

and clusters of brown cones swaying against 

baby-blue Texas sky.  I watch two young squirrels 

chase each other across the lawns.  The father 

in me wants to tell them to be careful, 

to look both ways before crossing the street,

to pay attention.  But they are squirrels.  

What good would it do?  They wouldn’t understand. 

They wouldn’t listen even if I told them 

the hawks have returned to the neighborhood

and are, at this very moment, perched 

in the pines high above their playground.

Mark Jodon is the author of Day of the Speckled Trout (Transcendent Zero Press).  His second collection, Miles of Silence (Kelsay Books), will be published in June 2024.  Mark lives in Houston, Texas.