There are things I never would say to him,
Stories I never know how to tell, but
If they were blogged he might
See them and they would be
Said, delivered, out. And, my work,
Or a piece of it, would be
Done. That's just my
Hunch.
We might not say anything about it.
But it would be there, quiet as
The sound of the hairs on
Your head, growing.
Not now, not right away
But one fine day he might think
Right, that thing she said, now I get it.
(With a young child,
Limit your words, thoughtfully
Pick and choose your stories.
Never slip, as what you say may
Haunt you.)
So, nuking tonight's dinner,
Thinking what a contradiction it is
To nuke the virtuous grains and organic
Vegetables, it was a twist to hear on the radio
That James Gandolfini is dead --
Fifty-one, in Rome,
On vacation.
It is June.
It is a gentle night.
Even on a gentle night,
News may arrive that
Someone died of an untimely
Heart attack.
If I had happened to be in Kansas City,
At my son's elbow, chopping as he cooked
For his kids and his wife, I might say:
"There's this strange and strangely
Familiar point when fifty-one
Is recent and young."
My father would say 'Life is short, Missy.'
And, I never told you -- did you ever
Hear me tell anyone? -- that mortality
Was a theme of your grandfather's? He never
Agreed with the deal, the set up, you
Know, this arrangement
Of being mortal."
As for me, I would like to
Say, son, circumstances are
Most definitely subject to
Change without notice.
Be prepared.
In a long ago time shrouded in mist and
Uncertainty, before my son was himself a father,
I would sit up in bed in the dead of
Night (I would rather not mention
This) and pant myself awake.
I was panting. His single
Parent, terrified of our
Never-ending bills.
But, please know (as Long Island
Medium says, bearing messages
To the living from the dead) your
Spirit will become easier if you
Are brave and a parent can,
If he or she is brave,
Keep to a path well
Ahead of the
Petrifying
Pay dates of
Parenthood.
As long, of course,
As they (the parents)
Remain alive.
I believe what my father knew, what
My son knows: peace can be deep,
Turning the pages of a bedtime story,
Or watching a restless child
Settle or sleep.
And the moral (aye, if there be a moral)
Would be that although we struggle
To speak, and the story is not
The one we intended to tell,
No one story matters too
Much. It is the telling,
Like the breathing.
That lives.
That's the story.
("Hold onto your hat.")
(Please know that I am hearing
A definition of amen: May it be so.
Here is a hope, a desire.
May it be so.)
