Sunday Poem #10
Post Mortem
This is my father’s child, Mother. My
half-sister, Marguerite, here
in this photograph. I know you are angry,
but bonds of blood compelled me here.
I had to see her; could not will her
into non-existence, as you do.
She should have been at Papa’s funeral,
she had the right. You would not allow it.
I understand. He had another
family, one we knew nothing
about, secreted in the snowy scrub
of central Saskatchewan. These are facts.
She is thirteen. Those trips–
to Ottawa, Papa said–returning sombre,
silent, grief scoring his back, the night
the telephone rang and you answered,
but no-one replied.
You are angry. So am I. Did we
know this man? And yet. She has his clear
grey eyes, that stolid wedge of chin, scimitar
nose, sudden smile. He phoned her, the afternoon
before he died, told her he loved her.
Never once told me. In twenty years, not
once, Mother, although I knew.
Such reticence left him lonely, a
planet orbiting a distant
sun, our silences a language, the body’s
mute offering. But here, in these horizontal
plains he was transformed, a man who told
his daughter she was the rain that greened
the parched and fallow fields
of his heart.
………………………………………………
It’s Poetry Sunday at the Flourishing Muse! Come share your poems in Comments…let’s celebrate the soul-voice that is poetry, together!
Post-Mortem is a narrative poem, inspired in part by the story of a woman I knew many years ago, who discovered, after her father died, that he had had a second, secret family. Thirty years later, I saw a photograph in a magazine of a young woman in riding gear, standing beside her horse… Somehow, it reminded me of that earlier story, and this poem emerged as a result.
Get updates with RSS
Get updates via email
Follow me on Twitter
My LinkedIn profile
beautiful. there are so many families who experience this. you’ve so eloquently distilled a vast landscape of emotions that surely must arise in a situation like that.
Perfect Screaming Babies
my dreams birth poems
perfect screaming babies
crown from my cosmos
starshine wild and wet
pink universes plop into spiralbound arms
lusty-latch on to pen’s ripe nipple
sloppy slurp first white milk of page
then surrender to sleep
exhausted
but born.
Jody Lewis
I love this poem, Jody, the muscularity of it, the lovely alliterations, the music and rhythm of birth, suckling, sleep that travels through its lines.
Thanks so much for sharing this with us!
What a wonderful poem, Hiro! It has amazing emotional depth, so sad that it brought tears to my eyes. I know a family in this position so the poem was even more poignant.
You have a wonderful site and I love all your Sunday poems!
Caroline´s last post … The Types of Siamese Cats
Boxes
Small inconsequential things–
the placement of boxes
haphazardly stacked
with attitude
on the last day of your life
that have, until today,
INSISTED
on remaining stagnant–
a testament,
something that said, definitively,
‘I was here, I was physically present,
I was a pain in the ass at times,
I did things for you
even when I didn’t want to’
–proof of love–
and, somehow, sans logic, seems to mean
‘I am still here’.
You are,
and you’re
not.
Somehow, today,
it is time to move,
to cry and grieve yet again
for all that is different,
to allow that difference
to seep further into
my everyday world, a world
where boxes are stored
high on shelves,
completion of projects within stalled
in this world where sons
lie deep within
the seeping, sinking ground
while bass riffs beat soundless
loving rhythms in my heart.
Through grace he leaves
traces, relics,
unexpected evidence
of love and Presence:
feathers
a touch of wind,
lyrics and clouds that spark
memories and bits of dreams
barely remembered, yet—
you touch me, somehow, smiling,
and I Know
and without awareness, Grace
slowly expands into
boxes neatly stored,
Teddy’s unfinished Christmas stocking
awaiting, perhaps,
a grandbaby whose smile
echos another’s,
both lighting our lives with
love and laughter,
joy and
Hope.
Teresa, thank you for sharing this powerfully moving poem.
Hiro Boga´s last post … Sunday Poem #10