Fifty-three Years Ago, My Father Died at Fifty-three Memento Mori

Fifty-three years ago my father died at fifty-three The world turned upside down and didn’t right itself again The sun rose and set We fell in love We made babies We made art We voted for president Still nobody sat in his chair It seemed it would always be that way Then finally without fanfare or even acknowledgement it was over this silent lamentation this somber homage The kids played in his chair sliding on the shiny creased leather making it go up and down and recline a passel of them tumbling and laughing in Bapa’s chair with no rebuking I can’t remember exactly when it changed when insistent priorities and the consuming rhythm of the commonplace sent him up the ladder to where the rare books are honored and gather dust But he still comes upon me unexpectedly in the summer with the sound of trimming hedges The sweet animal smell of the tiny white privet flowers that float around him as he clips The euphoric smell of gasoline the raging alligator teeth eating through the privet In the later years It didn’t take all of Sunday anymore On a moon filled summer’s night he stands illuminated in the doorframe waving away the powdery moths waiting for the Libby’s peaches can of nightcrawlers we have pulled from the sprinkled lawn for tomorrow’s silent fishing On the lake That is also the sky In midwinter When the door flies open Banging on its hinges the snow blows in smelling of his tobacco following the scraping sound of the giant shovel at frigid dawn making a path for the grand belching exit of his latest jalopy Finally a masked grandfather in the hospital holding that mewling little thing their wet eyes touching And just a couple of years later the popcorn eating grandkids press to his side In the huge littered bed where he has become domiciled to hear the latest chapter of The Pearlmans on the Moon facilitated by his invention of the anti-gravity machine that promised all of us a new planet To live on Provincetown, MA 2018/2025