UNTITLED (an altered sestina)

My father has weather-beaten hands.
When I was young, I would trace the path
across his palm, climbing the callous mountains,.
sliding into the softer, fleshy valleys.
“You are as old as the earth,” I said,
and he laughed, tousling my hair.

He, a child once,
born of the open air,
swam through dirt on knees and hands
(singing Jai guru deva om)
with flowers atop his head
until his mother frowned, and made him take a bath.
He, a rebel once,
drove through valleys
accelerating until he could no longer tell
houses from mountains.

And the houses, and the mountains,
they became concrete bases, bound with wire, where they cut his hair,
dressed him in forest colors.
Valleys became volleys,
and he learned to hold a gun in his still-smooth, shaking hands,
learned to walk a straight, unflinching path,
one boot in the shadow of the last:
“Service before self,” he said,

“one over all,” he said.
Days grow into mountains
behind a desk, following the war's path
(tearing out his hair)
with a pen, jotting down the numbers with hands,
ink-blood-stained hands, tracing the valleys

of line graphs, of the bodies in the valleys.
“Un ab alto.” he said,
but it tasted like chalk on his tongue now. His hands
clench, unclench, try to move mountains
to no avail. He tries to grow out his hair
to no avail.
There is no signpost on this path,

this pockmarked path
he travels now. He takes off his boots and walks valleys,
and tries to shake the scent of death from his hair.
“The deeper you go, the harder you fly,” he said,
and smiled now, eager to climb mountains
he could master with only his hands.

His hair smells like earth, and the path
we take, hand in hand, takes us through valleys
he knows, but I have never seen.
He said: “This is how you climb mountains.”