The Son Writes

Death is blackened
by white roses orchestrating
the stage for grief.

My father wrote
those three lines,
before he died.
Now I hear them,
those lines, once more
as his fellows gather and muse
and drink about.

He was a good mentor,
a sensational man of letters--
his passing is felt.

But I’m the only one who manages to see
what my father wrote lines
ready to be drowned by history’s waves.
I see through the mush,
and the things my father did
to achieve a pedestal amongst guardians
of the ivy halls. But, he remains
for now, while I am alive and trying to confine
my own place for when they look at me
they only see the son, the shadow
of his greatness.