Dad

I dreamed you alive last night a revisit of our Sunday drives to Ladner seeking blackberries I came running back to the car my ice cream bucket filled with blackberries, my wrist full of red cuts. Blackberry juice some still trickling from my mouth, I grinned at you. I dreamed you back to the river where you took me fishing a black slimy bullhead my first trophy fish I was proud you looked at me with disapproval as I poked my fish with a knife till its guts oozed out. I dreamed you back to the pear orchard the biggest pears where at the top of rotting tree limbs. You shouted a warning at me to be careful I was eager to please you and ventured far out on fragile limbs Septembers crisp chill reddening my face but it was your branch that snapped and you crashed heavily to the ground. You broke your heel. I dreamed you back to Fraser Street you on your nightly walk I drunk out of my mind swearing at two girls passing by and I saw your face, that look and I tried to walk straight tried to apologize, tried to make things right but you quickened your pace as if I was a stranger.