Elegy for My Dad
A sailor
You moved about the house
With feet that expected the deck to move
As the ship steadily traversed the supple backs of waves
In a sea as deep as you were buried in your thoughts
Your first lesson was that I could talk and be acknowledged
Yet unheard
You showed me a love of hard work and a job well done
Stubbornness and intransigence and harsh judgment
I found the path to your approval
Guarded by a door
Fashioned in the shape of someone who was not me
Yet we shared games of cribbage
And your smoke second hand
As if we were in the non-com officer’s lounge on some Coast Guard cutter
Rolling gently
As the cancer gradually ate you
And radiation treatments destroyed your teeth
And your ability to taste or smell
You took your liquefied meals alone
Gradually receding from us
Like the tide
The smell of cancer burned into my memory
At the end
Fed life through tubes
Until your pain conquered your desire
Twelve years of battle finally over
Strange now you should finally come to me
All golden and shining
Beaming love and approval
Like dawn over the bay
For a moment only, but that’s okay
Because I get the message
And now I can accept you, too.
