O book, I count each page
     As I'd count toe and finger
If you were a wet babe
     And I again a father.

Bound, as you are, to please no one
     But to piss off, to fuck with,
To betray--you are your father's son.
     It's you I'm stuck with.

Still your flesh in signatures,
     To my raw index, to my thumb,
Is sexy as a nipple
     Risen stiff in vellum.

So forgive me this passionate
     If digital exploring.
Know I'll never lay you flat
     Or find you boring.

Know you held my interest,
     At least at parturition.
Know when critics slapped your ass,
     It was for my tuition.

So give them a good crooning--
     That's all my expectation.
It's not as if your crowning
     Announced my coronation.

Know I loved your letters.
     Your syllables. All of them.
That there once was a man who slavered
     Over your colophon.

Self-expression, self-abuse,
     The sins of the father.
But would I have conceived you
     If I'd woken your mother?

I think not. Therefore you are
     Perfect: Tutor me in braille
So I can read your welts and scars
     By hand, when eyesight fails.

Sing, my book. And when I'm gone
     If doctors probe your stanzas
Looking for me--give them
     Proctology's answers.

Daniel Bosch lives and writes in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he also teaches at Harvard University. He won the Boston Review Poetry Prize in 1998.

 Daniel

 Bosch