My Father Returns

((Dr. Ralph E. Wick, OD, FAAO with tarpon 1930s))


My Father Returns

I was a child when my mother
pulled me from the Yellowstone,
walking, I went, at age two
to follow my Father with flyrod in hand,
only one foot out of water
when Mother grabbed it screaming.
I remember cutthroat colors
eye to eye
as I gasped in the torrent of wet
then saying
"What happens next?"
And everybody laughs when Father
tells the story years later.

Mother and Father fought over us.
Screaming at the chasms I'd fall in,
the fury of my creative Mother
saving me with piano, poetry and art.
Brother had more visions of Father.
I went to Mother.
Now years after my own family failed,
I care for Mother at the end of life
slowly gone to mindless time
caring only for her body.

In these later middle years
I feel a shadow in the distance,
the ghost of my Father on the Yellowstone,
the last arc of line and fly touching
an unbroken surface with fish food bug
pulling me again to wondrous rapids
becoming what I called him
when I fell into the yellow chasm
with only fish to see:
Daddy.


Barry G. Wick, June 2008
copyright (c) by Barry G. Wick