Diaspora Sonnet 34
       

My father in his twenties wears his pressed suit
and carries a small hatbox possessing something

sensible. Something pleased with itself.
And through the cacophony of the queued-up

industry of men coming home from work, my father is plain.
Avenues of dust and motored trikes belch in umbrage

to the poem of it—we might've stayed.
                                                                My plain father,
tired of the staccato of each adjectival commute:

loamy, worn, blunted, and angry. Plain as the possibility
of wonder in a hatbox. As sensible as the need to leave

the country.
                    He is the center of sense, my father,
never hesitating to thread his Windsor knot and polish

his one pair of dress shoes. Because he will wear his hat.
He will go. And, thereafter, we will live in his thereafters.

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Copyright © 2019 Oliver de la Paz All rights reserved
from Cherry Tree
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission