When my father was alive,
We had very little to say
To each other, but now
...
How can anything born to water
Look so drowned? Your sad eye,
Half closed, sees nothing.
...
By the foot of the bed,
from memory, I recite
D'Invilliers' quatrain.
“Then wear the gold hat”
...
Beneath the waters, since I was a boy,
I have felt the tug of gravity pulling
Me down. This all-too-heavy body
...
What she thought of all he'd just said
Would remain a mystery, as so much
About her remained a mystery to him,
...
My Father
When my father was alive,
We had very little to say
To each other, but now
I talk to him all the time.
I'm more grown up and allow
Myself to say things I never
Would have dreamed of before,
Things I thought were forever
Buried in the past. Sometimes
I'm angry, not at what he did
but what he didn't do, crimes
of the heart, the way he kept
His feelings to himself, shutting
Me out. Only recently have I wept
For him, and for me, and found
What there is to love and admire
In him. And now I am bound
To him by the strongest of ties.