A Poem for My Father (96 years old on Feb. 29, 2000) Poem by Sonia Sanchez

A Poem for My Father (96 years old on Feb. 29, 2000)

Rating: 3.5


With exact wings
Your words sailed back
into your throat. Could
not fly forward.
Your mouth face
startled by this autumn
Thunder went south again.
I had forgotten the salute
of death, how it waits Militarily
on the outskirts of our skin.
I had forgotten how death
howls inside our veins.
O father, how much like a child
again I felt as I ran down doctors
painted on porcelain corridors.
O My father, as I breathed
inhaled for us both,
I began to sing a song
you sang when I was little
without a poet's name,
Afraid of all the shadows
cremating my bones,

Remember the nite,
The nite you said
I love you
remember...


I remembered your voice swollen
in a ritual of words on
152nd Street and St. Nicholas Place.
Now I, daughter of applause,
hands waterlogged with memory,
asked for nothing more
as I circled your hospital room,
sequined with our breaths
in an hour-glass of sound.

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Sonia Sanchez

Sonia Sanchez

Birmingham, Alabama United States
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