Beads

“What do you want to know about me? Ask me anything,” He said, and for a moment before my father died I marveled At the helpless transparency of life when it collides with The orphaning of opportunities, the check-out of choices, The abrogation of alternatives. A trillion moments strung into beads, each bead a word, A gesture, an emotion, but once the string is covered, It snaps under its own burden, and every bead hurtles Floorward, away from the throat, into crevices and Drains, through open doorways and across cement pathways, And Father, I might have said, had I answered quickly enough: Shall I spend my days gathering the beads you so carefully Strung around you, shall I catalogue each color and cut and Reconstruct the patterns that made this your mystery, While my own string grows and winds around my Mortal inarticulation? Or shall I collect the few rare stones Of yours that once were polished by your perspiration, Then add them to my own, so you disappear into me? Or would you rather I search frantically for your extant pieces? Scramble about on my knees, straining half-focusing eyes for Naught? Fly through your cavalcade of minutes while I Squander my own. I want to ask, my Father, I want to know In those beads broken and scattered throughout creation, Where was I when you gathered them in the sum of your years?