It is with a bittersweet feeling I take up writing today. I have written about my father in this blog and dedicated poems to him as well. It is with deep sadness that I learn how to deal with a new situation, since he recently had a stroke and is going through what I consider Hell. Unable to move of speak, unable to eat or swallow… a prisoner in his own body, the stature of the proud man shattered forever.
These are times of reminiscing, times of looking at his mirror and thinking about life. What have I done with the life I’ve been given? Have I given more than I have taken? Have I been righteous, have I seized every day? The answer is difficult since we try to do our best and sometimes it just isn’t enough. I fear my father’s situation, and know for a fact he would much rather leave this World than remain as he is. The thoughts that cross my mind are sometimes so ominous they choke me with their tight embrace…
I’ll drink many cups of Earl Grey and milk, to remind me of better times, when I was just a child and everything was potential.
………………………………….
Again,
Up in the air.
Watching the cotton-like clouds
And the tidy fields
From above.
The Peace from above…
No ringing phones
No daunting news
No rush.
Only a capsule in the sky,
Suspended in time.
Times are a-changing.
Too fast paced for me
Those I have known have either departed,
Are about to do so,
Or are just growing old… (As do I)
How did it come to be?
That yesterday’s maiden
Turns tomorrow thirty and three.
That my younger sister,
Whom I held with tiny arms,
Is now with child.
That my strong, hardened father
Is tied to a hospital bed,
His essence lost forever…
So many before me
Have written about time,
The passing of time,
Its fleeting nature
And how it changes the nature of man.
But to endure it…
That’s a totally different thing!
To watch beauty fade
To be called a madam
Instead of a girl,
To lose the reflection of your own self.
These are the hard times
Of growth and endurance.
May the New Year ahead
Bring forth the courage
To accept and embrace
The changes brought forth by time.
………………………………….
writing and poetry
Your elegant descriptions of him and personable photo insure that he'll be well remembered.
ReplyDeleteIn the U.A. we have something called an Advance Directive that hospitals help patients with, to avoid the wrong decisions made in sad declines.
Thank you for your kind words!
ReplyDeleteIt would be good if we had something like that over here...
Before It's Over
ReplyDeleteThey say in dreams a house is a metaphor for a life
Windows open to the world, mysterious eyes seeking snowfall,
slush debris, snarls of auto travelers rushing through
Hidden inner rooms may appear, unsought buried treasure
Deep within decorated walls, a smiling child painting with excrement
Dimpling, she offers scented flowers never known to earth's earnest soil
Silly dreams, silly living, skillfully denying,
making much of
a molehill here or there
Mountains are metaphors for achievement
Struggling like Sisyphus, discovering like Pythagoras
basic relationships on which to build
Empires, like species of mystic birds
emerge from glowing flame, flogging slaves to
roll those rocks from imperial graves up the peaks of glory
Like family, and its social cognates, enslave to stories:
"This is who we are."
February snowing through conflated years
Fear was my ally, hailing me on, hugging
with glorious laughter, carrying my steps through
onerous trails -- and those ebullient ecstasies of survival
Drunk on the gold that surpasseth science or light
Touching the cold sting, letting the song sing through me
Do you?
Feel the music? Abandon your amygdala to dance free
awhirl in a swirl of laughing snow?
In dreams, inchoate, unremembered, do we relive those
moments of bliss to keep us balanced, to give courage in a life
less lived, less honored?
Old, glazed-over eyes seek momentary solace, look long,
longingly, into a silly mist of snow beyond windows closed
securely against the cold. A dreamworld revealed,
in the interplay of eyes and mind
February 27, 2010