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43 The vigil of several years, Daddy, prepared me for a shorter vigil. Your last month I helped feed you and, when we were left alone, held your hand or massaged your feet. What deep-seated fear grew into Janet's travel phobia, which kept her from visiting you for a decade? Her phone calls, though, made you smile, and she talked to you two days before you could no longer speak. Just hours before your breathing became labored and you stopped talking, you confided to me that Carl and Bill, your two deceased brothers, were getting the boat ready, and I realized you were preparing to cross the river of the ancients. The last few days, no matter who was in the room, I kept holding your hand. The soft skin seemed not to have aged. Toward the end I formed a nest, enclosing your hand in both of mine. Tears were streaming down my face as you took your last breath. Are you watching me write this, Daddy, by my river? As soon as I got out of the car to walk down the road to the canyon, the distinctive call of a kingbird greeted me. Then it flew, sunny side down, to a new tree. Now two tiny birds are flitting around me. Their small yet insistent voices sound familiar. Ruby-crowned kinglets! No kingfishers? A dad and his daughter-- maybe ten years old-- walk in front of me in the river, low because of a serious drought. (But the rains started again as Whitman drove me home from the airport.) Holding fishing poles, the father and daughter step from rock to rock, and I say hello but try not to stare as they stop to my left and search the water for a few minutes. I steal glances as I fish for words to write. She has long red hair, just as my sister's was; now Janet's is streaked with white. I know you remember, Daddy, the times you took your two girls swimming. The three of us are together again. |
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Issue #33, June, 2003 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.