Sometimes I Don’t Know What My Autistic Nephew Means

By David B. Prather
April 15, 2023

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My nephew asks me, What is blue?
                           He has me
in the shadows across evening snow,
                           but I tell him
both of his great grandfathers’ eyes,
                           two different storms,
one over the river, the other over all
                           these rugged hills.
I tell him the emptiness above us
                           we call sky,
and the vertigo of leaning back
                           and looking up.
I tell him how his mother worries,
                           how she looks
into his future without her. I don’t
                           tell him there is
a future without him as well.
                           I tell him of jay
and bunting, of grosbeak and warbler,
                           the feathers
I’ve found in thickets, the undergrowth
                           flinching under
a handful of weight. I tell him
                           the surface
of the river on a still day in summer,
                           the reflection
of eternity drifting away. But, no,
                           he says, not that.
Nothing like that.

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David B. Prather is the author of We Were Birds (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2019), and his second collection, Bending Light with Bare Hands, will be published by Fernwood Press. His work has appeared in many publications, including Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Cutleaf, The Meadow, Sheila-Na-Gig, etc. He studied acting at the National Shakespeare Conservatory, and he studied writing at Warren Wilson College.

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