Lamentation

for my step-father

Silence, the anthem of my father’s new country. --William Matthews

Say something true: I am eleven 

in the seed of my heart. I am 

also the barrenness of suburban 

driveways in all their whitewashed

loneliness. I could stand on the hill

outside my mother’s house-a curl

-a girl trying to learn how to fire

herself up to the sky-how to be

carried away with the rain-and 

still never catch the strike, the 

typewriter finality of your hands 

coming to their end in the embrace

of that other world. I guess you 

never thought you’d be seeing it

so soon. Father, I will call you

something formal now, because, really,

I hardly ever knew you at all. Father,

I wonder if you know, now, how devoted

I have become to learning 

your anthem             by heart

Author's Note

2015

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

i am quite taken by this sad write....the Father gone too soon...the daughter still learning of him...maybe through his words left behind...Love the "typewriter finality of your hands"
i wish i had written that phrase...
we will all embrace some other world eventually....how well will we be known by those we loved...and maybe those we didn't show it to well enough.
will they have fond memories of us?
j.

[Eilis]

I ask myself those questions sometimes. We all seem to have secret selves we don’t share.

He was a writer himself and the first things I ever wrote were a tribute to him. Writing has been a way toward understanding the experience and also other things I might not otherwise. I suppose it’s only my own conception, but it’s a start.

Thanks for understanding this poem, Jacob. I appreciate your time and thoughts.