He's Back Poem by David Gullette

HE'S BACK
 
     How good that our dead parents can book these short visits. 
- Joseph Featherstone

                              
                              
So my deepest wish comes true:
My father returns from the dead
And I have him, here, at my kitchen table,
Back again at last,
And after the long embrace
I open a bottle of my best 
And tell him everything I‘ve wept for years,
Things I never got a chance to let him know:
I walk him through this house he never saw,
I show him the garden,
I sketch in the newest technology,  
Things he couldn't have dreamt of in 1969,
In fact I Skype my son, his adult grandson
(A year before his death he holds the baby high in Bristol, Tennessee)
And they babble on, stumbling, stunned by the strangeness
Of what has been restored.
Then: "Here are my books, here is my life,
Here is my darling wife, I have had a successful run,
Always missing you of course, but buoyed by the love
And the wit and easy nonchalance you willed me.
Here, have another sip, another dividend…."
The hours pass, he has nothing at all to tell me
But eyes wide begs for more news, more news.
After the whisky the coffee for him
The tea for me the new day softens the East
And now I have to resume the life I have had for half my life without him
Without him. Suddenly he rises
And embraces me farewell.
"This was good but I suppose I have to leave."
I don't say no.