Sonnet in anticipation of December 12th; My glimpse of you while pouring a shot

(Excerpted from "Untitled Non-History of my Father's Death," 2022)

    
   the gliding scent of phone calls never latched
   your double twelve, the closing of the clock
   and cycle in the measure of my glass,
   its verbal trace, its plangent tender rock. 
   if, lifting up your gray, i find my-still-
   self trying to calculate some line of flight,
   i'll reap a flowered bottle from the sill:
   tobacco, olive, chocolate, plum, goodnight. 
   but, trying to fail to practice what i peach,
   i represent a thing that there is not,
   so if i am the falters of my speech,
   i write because it's more exact than thought. 
   one month before the priest brought out the thing,                
   you called me, and it didn't even ring.