Sunday, June 19, 2016
THOSE DAYS
THOSE DAYS
-- for my father
(1)
Last
days
of
the cricket – my father
lay
dying.
(2)
A
train on the sidetrack.
My
father waiting to die.
In
the distance, rain.
(3)
Now
the corn
has
turned
and
still
my
father
waits.
I
turn
my
eyes
and
summer
disappears.
He
is
learning
to
die and
shows
me
the
way.
(4)
Joy
in the small things –
the
soybeans turning,
a
bag of apples
for
my wife,
my
father
with
his coffee.
(5)
Now
that he is gone,
the
sky lets down
a
golden haze
upon
the corn stubble,
upon
the tawny fields
where
beans stood,
upon
my sorrow.
(6)
Oh,
these fields –
my
father saw them
his
last ride home.
(7)
We
are more
concerned
with
the
loveliness
of
the leaves
in
these trees
than
my father
was,
who is
now
above
such
things.
(8)
Hawk
lifts
above
the empty
field.
I think of
my
father,
how
the things
he
touched
touch
me.
(9)
How
like my father's hands, mine.
(10)
Everything
under
the sun
at
the grave
and
nothing
but
the sound
of
wind in
the
pines. I
hear
only
of
the pain
my
father
whispered.
(11)
After
the burial,
one
star in the sky.
(12)
Nothing
I
want
or
need.
He
has
already
given
me
everything.
(13)
And
somewhere
beyond
the wind,
the
memory of him.
