Too Fast For Me
For every step my father took,
my short legs took three.
“Daddy, please,” I called to him,
“you walk too fast for me.”
My sister took a husband;
my brother went to sea.
Our father sighed, “Our family time
has been too brief for me.”
As my teen years ended
and college lay before me,
Dad shook his head in sadness,
“It’s all too fast for me.”
When Mama died, we reminisced
their forty-seven years.
The passing time, the life they shared
were captured in our tears.
And as computers came of age,
Dad watched me surf the net.
“I’d like to learn,” he said to me,
“But I’m not ready yet.”
Then as Dad lay dying, carrying years
that numbered ninety-three,
I could not help but say aloud,
“They went too fast for me.”
* I wrote this poem on the way to my father’s funeral. I wanted to read it aloud as a tribute, but my sister said the rhyme made it sound too amateurish. She has her PhD in Literature, so I didn’t argue. I should have.
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