(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.
