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Janet Buck |
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A Love Poem to My Father A diagnosis of lung disease and very few years to live -- the words all stick to every step. I watch pink roses on the porch endure fall rain like wood assumes a nail hole. "My friends all have it worse," you say, that practiced recital of strength in perfectly irrefutable pitch, notes themselves delivered in a glass of juice you drink because it's handed you. Why have we chosen to mimic stone, move and roll, never touch, except to cling to absolutes in a world containing opposites? At 81, you're a bruising pear beside a pressing thumb. I feel us on the brink of endings marked by extinguishing light. My half-lived adoration rocking on the edge of a stair. Wednesday I will make you crêpes, fold them into loving darts despite the impotent mix of flour and milk. I have been speechless and sleepy for weeks as if my silence might stop time. I long for this poem to scissor a hole in our clothes, expose what's vulnerable and kind, lay my head upon your chest, listen to your labored sighs, sew back russet maple leaves on branches laden with ice. Binding "In sickness and in health" seems like a viable bond, even through autumn years where vernal green gives way to gold, then curls a leaf that floats beyond the grabbing hand. Once geese fly south in a rush of jubilant noise, our bird bath shrinks to a coat of ice, winter yawns and swallows us, will we have the words we need? Rows of red geraniums anticipate the coming frost, dropping their waste to blanket their roots. The art of love grows scarce in grief. Gravestone tongues jut out from a blanket of grass. It's October and strangely the roses don't give up, though I can't help counting the endings I know. Aging alters the way we stand; dancing becomes a scrapbook photo tossed on a slippery floor. I lean on your shoulder, finger your watch, aware of a clock I don't control. It's almost enough to button a sweater and sit. Another doctor's waiting room becomes a picnic plagued with menacing rain. |