For My Father Gazing at the World After His Mother Died
If I said anything, he’d stop, so I just let him be.
Tell me, I wanted to ask, how
to be parentless & alone & secretly
in love with water. There’s a now
we each live in
that sometimes feels more like never
than enough. If my father believes in ascension,
then out there, beyond the lake, his mother lives forever.
In the lake, too. In the wind to comb my father’s hair.
In the tree that wills each holy & parentless
limb to cast a shadow in the morning sun’s light. Out there,
I hope, all we’ve ever missed
becomes all we ever are. I love. I’ve loved. I will love to keep my
father alive.
When he turned slow to me, he blamed the wind for all his crying.
by Devin Kelly
from Ecotheo Review
March 2018