Fathers

The Seattle post . . .

Crepuscule
A Failing Father’s Unfailing Love
by David Keith Johnson


His fog bound heart grows heavy with the words
Of stark affection; They fall in a flood
Of maudlin expression, over-rich,
An inundation of thick sentiment;
We step away, recoiling from the gush —
Too much! Too much! we think, perhaps we say,
And so the rain rolls off our coats and souls.

But step back once again, and raise your eyes;
This is no midday storm annoying you;
See there, behind the clouds, piercing the fog,
Make no mistake — the sunset has arrived;
Your patience with this irritating rain
Will earn an unrepeatable reward
As darkness falls — a farewell flare of light
You cannot keep, you never will forget.

The London riposte . . .

Kaddish for my Father
by Kenneth Durham Smith


1.

The coffin pauses above the
carved sides of the grave.
The coffin’s lid covers you,
the vault will cover the coffin, 
nearby is the soil to cover the vault
and the grass to cloak the soil.
I say Kaddish for you, the first time
for someone I actually know.

2.

As I studied the flowers
that flanked your coffin,
and again a few days later
as we planted an azalea,
I remembered your gardens:

your gladiolas and zinnias
four o’clocks and asters
out behind the old house
slowly losing its strength.
This afternoon I dug flower beds,
planted flowers.
This evening the clouds turned black,
the clear patches of sky
a soft wounding blue
and the world changed.

A piece fell out of my life,
out of the puzzle that
already was not complete.

3.

I almost didn’t recognize
the man in the coffin as you.
His cheeks defied gravity,
no light seeped from his eyes,
only the wrinkled spotted hands
with arthritic joints, 
swollen galls in goldenrod stems, were yours.
Those hands which had waved and twitched
like sparrows, were still.

4.

Last day of February,
snowdrifts isolated,
sky gray and unfocussed,
I visit your doctor and the hospital.
At the nursing home I pick up your things:
a box of spy novels, some clothes
my letter, which arrived too late

Driving back, Dennis’ cigarette smoke,
as insubstantial as a ghost,
is sucked out his cracked-open window
A stand of birch trees cuts sharply
against the background of leafless woods,
so full of light they almost burn 

We pull to a stop next to a field
That, still hard, but swept of snow,
holds twenty or thirty deer
feeding on last season’s gleanings.
You have crossed that field, your feet,
like the deer’s, left no tracks.
I look after you and see only
a break in the woods, and the large round eyes
of many deer staring back.