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Fatherloss

A Visitor
by Mary Oliver

​My father, for example,
who was young once
and blue-eyed,
returns
on the darkest of nights
to the porch and knocks
wildly at the door,
and if I answer
I must be prepared
for his waxy face,
for his lower lip
swollen with bitterness.
And so, for a long time,
I did not answer,
but slept fitfully
between his hours of rapping.
But finally there came the night
when I rose out of my sheets
and stumbled down the hall.
The door fell open
 
and I knew I was saved
and could bear him,
pathetic and hollow,
with even the least of his dreams
frozen inside him,
and the meanness gone.
And I greeted him and asked him
into the house,

and lit the lamp,
and looked into his blank eyes
in which at last
I saw what a child must love,
I saw what love might have done
had we loved in time.

Father and Son

I needed you to be a god.
I needed you to rescue me
 from yourself.
I needed you to be larger
 than a glass of scotch.
I needed you to leap out from the depression.
I needed you to look me in the eye
 and see me.

Instead you were not a god.
Instead you loved me in a human way.
Instead you stumbled and slurred your words of apology.
Instead my adolescence was cast adrift.

We grew apart.
 You in deeper withdrawal.
 Me in increasing bitterness.
‘Till all we had was
“How’s the weather?” and the next cute grandchild story.

Over time, my life arced back towards you
 just as you body wore out.
Finally, it was your return to childhood
 that brought me to adulthood.

You left too soon
 or I arrived too late.

Sometimes the final goodbye
Contains every hello that did not happen.

 - Jose Enciso


 Abrazan (Reaching Out)
- para mi papa

Quiero escribir
en el idioma de mi papa

Corazon y el alma
abrazan a traves
  espiritu y tiempo

Puede
esta cancion
  volver
   uno a otro


I want to write
in my Father’s tongue

Heart and soul
reaching across
  spirit and time

May this song
return
 one to the other

 - Jose Enciso
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  • Home
  • Poetry
    • Persistence
    • Fire, Protest, Anger
    • Here and Now
    • Seeking
    • Awkwardness
    • Fatherloss
    • Healing
    • Harsh Truths
    • It doesn't have to make sense
    • The Troll
  • Blog
  • Listen, the book
  • STTF
  • Art
  • About & Contact
  • Appearances
  • The Funnies