Sorry, Dad! Poem by Daniel Trevelyn Joseph

I was pushed into the well of sadness
When I heard from Tilaka my librarian-wife
That my Dad read Dicketns and many novels
Including Pickwick Papers
Twenty years ago, in Yadhodhan.

I wish I had known, or rather
Shown interest. How happy Dad would
Have been if I had sat with him
Asking him what he read that day
And what he thought of those charaters.

When young Dad used to talk about
Elizabeth and Darcy, Rosalind of Arden, ,
Roger de Coverley of Addison, or Ivanhoe of Scott,
Or the heroine in Thackerays Pendennis:
Mom was no less, taught me Scott's patriotism.

As I lay down later in my bed
I felt bad severly, felt going mad
That I did not have elementary courtesy
For my Dad in his sixties and seventies,
And he never spoke a word of complaint.