Carol Ann Davis’s “Tips from My Father” by Jasmine Mulliken Lyrics

"Come out here," he'd call from the yard.
"I want to show you Mars." I'd stand
just in front of him, follow his finger up into the sky,
the house spinning away from us till
nothing mattered but my father's hand
and his hundred planets. And his voice a pause before he
found it, then:
"There it is." And maybe I saw it. This is how
he taught me--in case I was ever lost at sea,
or in the desert--how to navigate my way back home.
With each new season a new sky to learn, a serious
business, like reading a map. "Look here,"
he'd say, "this is something you might need."