My Father...In Memoriam Poem by John Tansey

My Father
who wouldn't get close enough
to even hit me
imagine how much further
just to hold me
he would have to come.

He was that kind of man
who finally speaks only
after the incantation of my dreams
that leaves me
in a bed of sweat
unaware if he really touched me at all.

Having never spoken
in public or private,
only in these self initiated
seances did we talk at all.

The bond even more stronger
when I became a father
and saw through my sons eyes
how young and scared he must have been then.

Later, divorced
I see now all I did not then.
How he dissolved into lte night T.V
and cup cakes. Just struggling
to live on after love had died.

A ladies man all his life...
I never once saw him talk to one
after she left.