A Poem Today…  It’s August 31, the end of summer.  For an old English teacher, there are few times more ripe (The old English teacher knows that ripe as a one syllable adjective in comparison should be riper, but, dammit, it just doesn’t sound right.) than the end of summer and the beginning of another school year. So this afternoon in my almost longing to be involved in all that again, I tried to tamp the ache down with a browse through a notebook of “stuff” I wrote long ago when I was getting ready for another school year. I found a page of scribblings dated August 31,1990. I was fifty-five. The scribblings were descriptions of my dad who had died at age sixty-six in 1969. Halfway down the hand-written page, the scribblings became this poem, an imaginary conversation with my father.  

These days more than ever

I get him mixed up with me.

I wonder who the reflection is

as I walk along the street.

Glancing sideways to catch him

staring back at me.

It’s the way he looked, the way he walked,

and this morning 

as I spread the lather 

around my face

avoiding the mustache

it was my face…and his,

his mustache and mine.

He says,

We should have talked.

I say,

About what?

About everything, he says.

We are talking now. I say.

I know, but it’s too late.

I don’t like the idea that it’s too late

for anything…

especially talking.

What is it I should know from you?

Isn’t there anything,

some unanswered question

after all these years?

I once wanted to ask you about Mother.

Did you ever…

you know… step out on her?

Every day when I went out into the world.

Every day?  I don’t believe it.

Every day.  I stepped out on her.

The world and I had an affair

and she was jealous.

Still is, I guess.

One day I went off with death

and didn’t come back.

Vivaldi, Cello Sonata No. 2 in F Major

Aaron Bullard, cello; Robert Plimpton, Organ