Home
       

As I grow older,
and older still,
my wife will look at me
and say that I increasingly
resemble my father,
that elderly gentleman in a tie,
the man who could talk
all day about the War,
his years as a pilot,
life's long flight, the sky he loved.
Soon I'll look like him at the very end
in his bedroom at the cottage,
the years stripped down to nothing,
when on his white bed he lay
like the soldier he was,
his arms by his side, ready.
In his final hours
my mother and sister attended him,
anointing his brow with cool drops
from a white washcloth,
touching his arms, his hands.
From his mouth ,
they took his false teeth,
set them on the bedside table
next to his glasses.
In the stillness they sang
his favorite hymn—
His voice is so sweet
the birds stop their singing—
as they waited for the moment,
its arrival in the room.
That day
over the house by the ocean
the sun blazed
and noon's all-encompassing light
cast no shadow. When he died,
my mother and sister saw
on the windowsill looking in, a bird,
not the common black-masked cardinal,
but an unexpected red finch,
humblest of birds,
its black eyes shining,
wings crossed behind its back,
small bird sent to gather
into the tiny hollow of its crimson breast
my father's last breath.
One moment the bird was there,
a presence;
the next it vanished into empty sky,
my father's true home,
the light,
O my beloved, O beautiful country of air.

Tweet

Copyright © 2018 Richard Jones All rights reserved
from Stranger on Earth
Copper Canyon Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission