is toy-size. Tempered-steel peen: a tiny Shinto temple. Handle: a bulbous hardwood
swell—oiled and inked by a master watchmaker’s palm. Wide-awake for what needs
a tap or pop to tick the improbable into being. Before he died, Derek nearly completed
an exact replica of Greenwich Time’s—the world’s most accurate—mechanical clock.
The month after his death and his daughter’s wedding, Horologist Magazine featured.
his masterpiece—a near-perpetual wristwatch mechanism. Light of heart—and hand—
at the wedding rehearsal, Derek motored his wheelchair through Alpine underbrush.
The digital—winged memory—he captured was a prelude for his own lift off—
after giving his favorite daughter away wearing a butterfly tie.

Your hammer Derek—
which you wielded
like an eye surgeon—
also pounded a heartland
of what we know,
we don’t know! May
it’s right resounding
sound stretch time
open. Its peals wake us
to explore more flutters,
celebrate evaporating
patterns of joy we fathers
shared—in our one meeting—
raising toasts for an ecstatic
voyage of our children’s
timeless union