The house holds fast the measure of a man:
a beam draws tight, the stair accepts the strain.
Her rocking keeps the upper dark aground,
his voice breaks down to timber, dust, and grain.
She rocks the boys as ballast, not as kin,
their legs gone slack with years they haven’t lived.
The night instructs them how a man comes in
and how his body must at last be moved.
I’ve seen this passage set inside the bone:
the pull from father into son made plain,
a tensile line no hand can call its own,
drawn tight by care, by duty, and by pain.
It held until I felt him start to fall;
no law remained—just balance, bone, and wall.