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Poem
Memories felt after so long repressed
Now burn like a fire inside of my chest 
They flow now as ink from the tip of my tongue 
For the father I lost when I was too young 
These memories loosed like the breach of a dam 
They spill and wash over everything that I am 
They are the reservoir of all the tears that I hid 
So my mother didn’t carry any more than she did 
They’ve chiseled me out like a river through stone 
Making spaces within me that may yet be unknown 
Those waters have shaped me into who I’ve become 
A boy who’d be better than whom he came from.

I’d be nothing like you; I swore that I wouldn’t 
I’d make the right choices that somehow you couldn’t
The fact that I thought this way still makes me sad 
For I sometimes remember you as a pretty good dad 
Of laughter and care I have vague recollection 
There even are thoughts that I hold with affection 
Like when you brought me hunting to your special blind 
And were patient with me as I talked the whole time 
We caught worms for fishing, played catch with a ball 
You taught me to build things; all of these I recall 
You made the memories that good parents do 
So why can’t  that  be how I remember you?

But sadly, the memory I cannot forget 
Is of you alone with a beer and cigarette 
Sitting on the porch staring off into space 
With an unreadable look on your face 
The kind that no childish smile could soften 
It’s only still clear because I saw it so often 
As if after looking too long at a light 
A harsh afterimage though you’re gone from my sight 
I see the worst things of the man that you were 
Cast in sharp relief while the good is a blur 
And there will be no future to recast that lens 
For the father I lost cannot give a defense.

There’ll be no tomorrow for starting anew 
You’ll get no chance to change how I remember you, 
To repair your image or the way that I think, 
To explain the fresh flowers hidden under the sink 
Or the one drunken night that you slept off in jail 
Or any faults I remember with vivid detail. 
You can’t apologize for losing your temper 
Or for any other petty wrongs I remember 
You can’t for you’re gone; you have lost any hope 
Snuffed like the cigarettes that you once used to smoke
And the truth that perhaps I have too long denied 
Is that mostly I lost you before ever you died.

Even when you were home you were often not there
Insubstantial, like you were the smoke in the air 
But now the beer cans are empty, the ashes are black, 
And the time that is lost we will never get back 
I’ll never have answers to the questions I kept 
And that is the truth I can finally accept 
I’ll never know reasons for the choices you made 
And that bothers me less with each passing decade 
So I won’t make excuses or guess at the why 
For to pretend that I know them at all is a lie 
In the end I accept you just for who you are 
The father I lost to a drink in a bar.


PS Added: 8.22.18
Written: 12.4.15
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