Photo Of My Father, Age 61 Poem by michael hogan

PHOTO OF MY FATHER, AGE 61

Behind the stables near Cahirsiveen
smoking one of the many cigarettes that killed him
he looks out on the frost of an Irish winter
his arm around a white stallion nuzzling his chest.
His smile bemused, ironic in this blown-up snapshot
that hangs above my desk thirty years later.
The shape of his presence like a threadbare jacket
too thin to warm this winter room.
Time has been at me too with its sharp invisible teeth.
Even south of the border December is bone cold
the landscape bare and brown
masking any hope for a new year.

This is the only life he had
and it ended not in celebratory sun
but in the prison of ill-health, failing charm
and all the rosaries of his days memorialized
by an ungrateful child, now grown old like him
smoking a cigarette
envying the white stallion's frosted breath
the unshod hooves solid against unyielding earth.