(or, 15 years)
My father already gone,
when my mother dies
I’ll be an orphan. Mind you,
she’s well & I’m too old
to be a ward of any state.
My wife & children will
have to care & foster me
until finally I grow up.
This being said:
I am a grown man,
who lost his old man
in a selfish age
& it didn’t kill him,
like he expected,
when he imagined,
as a boy, being
fatherless would.
That being said:
dead dad’s do haunt
& mostly it’s for good.
In dreams & costume
clad they enter as
memories re-clothed
as Indians hunting
what-might-have-beens
but they never tell
where they left unfinished
manuscripts you know exist.
When I die, one hopes not
so young as he, I will return
a songbird that follows my boys
to whatever landscapes,
real or imaginary,
they believe in enough
to look for me in.
Soon: Winter will arrive.
The redbird will sit patiently
in the hedge-row, which will be
dusted lightly with the snow
that might just be the distinguished years
some old men never get to use.
_______________
This is another re-found work from last year, now revised. I wrote it in December(2009), but it is more of a September poem.
All of this is beautiful and deeply personal. If I haven't said so, reading your work always inspires me to get to the more central, true thing I'm trying to say. Your precision with language and ability to strike the perfect chord of hopeful melancholy here is simply lovely.
ReplyDeleteThis brought tears--it is so heartbreakingly beautiful:
When I die, one hopes not
so young as he, I will return
a songbird that follows my boys
to whatever landscapes,
real or imaginary,
they believe in enough
to look for me in.
Ditto on all of the above, including the tears. The first stanza got to me too, because I've struggled with that "adult orphan" idea too, even though both of my parents are alive and well. As for finally growing up... I think we've both got too much Peter Pan in us for that.
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