On Father's Day, it is this man I remember and honor, a man who took on a bunch of traumatized kids when he married my mother and earned his "Dad" the hard way, the man who died in my and my sister's arms with our brothers all around his bed in that town where none of us lived any longer.
I wrote this poem after his funeral, and it seems appropriate for Father's Day and all of us whose fathers and stepfathers and father-substitutes are no longer with us to celebrate on the day in their honor.
SAFE AT LAST
I can’t cry any more,
eyes swollen, lashes
stuck together,
so come then, elusive
sleep,
wipe the screen behind
closed lids
of today’s grief. Show
films
scrambled in the
projector,
ends and beginnings
framed
by the middle, split once
and then again, past
still coming,
future remembered,
present
dreamed but never known.
Mix the stilted eulogy
and the trip to Disneyland.
Let him coach the scrubby
little-league team
as we stand on glowing
green plastic
artificial grass carpet
under the cobalt blue
vinyl canopy,
listening to echoes
of his voice calling to
my brother,
“Slide home. Go for it.
Home.”
Published in
Heart's Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)
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