Ji Kwon Kong: A Poem For My Father Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Ashes of yellow umbrellas hung from the skylight of a maze-
Where are you now? My children grow blind without your gaze

Memories of you once unappreciated in life's fast moving stand-
Now I remember you, realized, the mortality of a fine man-

Immobile, turned into a cenotaph of lingering flesh-
Our hearth is emptied, hollowed by the wounding of your death-

Unequaled, I would give any prize to win your reprieve-
Yet knowing, emptied of vessel, the soul has a right to leave-

Where you go now, is the unquenchable question of living men-
Remembering your teachings as a way to raise my children-

As the lights glaze the malfunctioning eyes of heaven
Underneath of gravity's dementia into the wounds we are pressed-

I reach for you, silhouetted, magnified, straddling the horizons of a god-
Yet the mornings of life beckon, habitually forgetful, a flawed land of nod.

Awakening tomorrow, I will press the reasons why you have gone;
But the fruits turned to wine will only lead me down a path of forgotten time:

Only in the awful moments of calamity is your memory appreciated;
And by those moments I stand by you, a moment that is then abated:

Life is pressed-
Your day is soon awaited.