Father's Day
I remember everything.
Gray waves pound the sand
Skyscrapers piercing the horizon
Spears of dark monolithic cloud
The mist forming droplets in my hair
The ocean breeze on my neck like your cold fingers
Fresh from the sea
Bleeding electric shivers
I pull away.
It's been a long time since I was able to sit down with my father and have a talk.
Not that we talked all that much when he was alive. There were a lot of words. There was some listening. Mostly we just talked at each other, convinced understanding was beyond the grasp of the other. Sometimes it's that way.
It's been a long time since my fiancee and I sat in a Jersey drugstore parking lot debating gifts for our parents. We lapsed into talk about the future, or mostly I talked and she listened. It didn't change much over a couple decades, me talking. Seems I could find a lot to talk about no matter where or when. She could do a lot of listening.
Three thousand miles, the water is still gray. Thirty years, the mist is still cold and condensing. The dark ghosts on the horizon are the mountains of Admiralty Island and the Chillikats.
And bald eagles sound like seagulls,
Not the warriors we'd expect them to be.
They massacre the weaker birds and the unwary,
Splattering the yard with the eviscera of
Wood ducks and robins
That I have to clean while,
The mighty hunter in his aerie,
Eagle eyes me below,
Waiting for a misstep.
The other night I had a dream about my dad. He and I were sitting at Starbuck's having a coffee, making smalltalk. He seemed pretty happy. I asked him if he was and he told me he'd finally gotten used to being dead. That death was actually a decent form of life in its own right. Not that he'd recommend the transition as entertainment, but seeing as how we're all bought in, yeah, the water's okay once you get used to it.
I finished my latte. It was good to see him happy. I wondered when I was going to see him again, and my mood began to darken. He said to me that I was having my problem again. Allowing the not-yet to influence the here-now.
Once you die, someone ties your past to your future, so nothing is going to happen, and nothing has.
It's a weird way to live, but in fact, it's the way it is.
The future's the luxury of the living. The past a story you might have left on the library shelf.
I'm a father now. In my house
Father's day,
My kids used to get me cards
Or make me waffles for breakfast.
One year they didn't remember till lunchtime,
One year I didn't remember it till the following week and my father
Acted as if he'd forgotten all about it too.
However
Now that I'm wearing a dead-man's shoes
I realize he hadn't.
I remember you.