My dad died five years ago today. Heres a poem about it: IN MINNEAPOLIS, MY FATHER watched a crew wipe the family name from the face of our supper club. The new owners slapped a cartoon moose on the sign out front. If I tell him I love him, either he is holding my hand while we step across an icy parking lot toward a greasy burger joint or he is on his deathbed and I still don’t know if he can hear me. His lungs, like voices in bars, grow louder over time. Once, drunk, at dinner, he said: If only we were more like the dogs, we could smell Death’s haunches, we could whip the flies with our ears. That year he watched his old supper club transform, like a summer afternoon into storm, unrecognizable, hail blinking off the roof and disappearing. Nothing broken, everything changed. The bridge across the river collapsed before he did. The laughter that came from him that day did not belong to him. If I tell him Father George is on his way, if I draw a cross on the hospital room wall, if his breath can’t fog up the window. Once, in his first apartment, sober, he said: we are dogs, I can’t stop licking my lips.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 19:39:24 +0000
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