Now Older than My Dad
Would he now understand an older version of himself?
He is still here my brother
laughed, right where we left him.
Our annual pilgrimage to the family
cemetery, our father always the first
stop on the tour. Dad’s humor a family
legend his last years, wearing a ball cap
with a foot tall blue and gold parrot
on top, wobbling as he talked, worn
just to make my brother cringe
as he drove Dad to doctor visits.
We act surprised he is still in his place,
we expect him one visit to have moved
to improve his view, or get near a young
blonde he met in his midnight walks
with the other ghosts… come find me
he snickers, not there, maybe over here.
My brother wanders off to find other long
dead relatives and I chat with Dad. Sixty-five
when he died, me now older. I thought age
would let me understand him, but I know
nothing of the creeping loneliness in what
was left of his mind, nothing of despair
that clung to him like his worn flannel shirts,
seductive enough he tried to kill himself
once, then told us the tree ran out in front
of his car and we should be yelling at the lone
oak in the field, not him. He knew little of me
as a boy, nothing of me as a man… now would
he finally understand me as an older version
of himself? I am you dad, you are me, you now
the younger man, me now the age we prayed
you would reach when we watched you die
those last months, neither of us able in…
