Some Last Things

"So many words to say"

[A poem and audio recording I wrote for Dad two months before his death, published in fwriction : review.]

Happy birthday, Dad.

Some Last Things

So many words to say now he’ll never say though

he feels their weight in silence, though he needs

their meanings, he knows he won’t find them,

still they bite at his tongue – what he once questioned

he knows for fact, what he once believed, he’s long since

forgotten or dreamed away – if you whisper your truths,

they’ll disappear, he’d say, so he never whispers them –

and when he does speak, his voice is the wild thud

of trees falling oceans from here in cool shimmers

of rain, in the hot curl of asphalt, in all the time needed

though there’s so little now to do, and he’s prayed deep

into the hole of his aching, but that’s not how it ends –

in a hush, in the beetle’s scratching at the baseboard,

a bullfrog’s croaking from the dark rocks in his pond,

his cane leaning against the opened window

Dad