A Visit with My Father

A Visit with My Father

The legs are slower
covered in support socks
that turn his white legs beige.
His hands are a varied mass
of liver spots and wrinkled skin.
On this face a bump or two
looks to be new from the last time
we talked four years ago.
His obvious pride for the brother
who stepped into his professional shoes
no longer strips me of myself.

Father, the song still plays
even though you're tone def,
never could sing all that well,
we'll manage not to follow you.
There's nothing we can do
from day to day to stop the fate
we felt at the grave of your parents.
You said you didn't like graveyards
We didn't linger long to say goodbye
it was our private moment
for me to say I'll watch over them.

Did we talk of my children?
Not one word.  There's no reason to open
that kettle long since boiled away
And did we talk of my mother
in whom part of you is still in love
and long since departed from the scene
enough to say she was fine,
though age begins to tell on her
and every pill doesn't do her well.
Here I am the walking love
you had one early spring evening
in a Dakota blizzard run wild in '51
So did you not expect a howl from me?
I'm full of them and more to come.


Barry G. Wick  (written in July of 1995