Love Field

My cheek is kissed to tell me
Daddy will never come
home again.
Reassuring me that love
for family transcends death,
I dreamed I eloped with his
image in the afterlife,
as an angel of God.
I am in envy of his love:
gentled by the grated sun,
fractured by the rolling thunder,
sequestered d by the waxy wrinkled
moon.
Venus winked late that evening
the earth poured black velvet
skies down over
Daddy’s southern comfort,
as he died up North.
He was, in his golden years,
akin to the South by then
and treasuring his youth,
wanted so much for me to
settle with him by being close
and in his company--a business man,
a musician, a man who golfed and
swam the ocean, a man with many
talents.

I thought of two
comfortable chairs and a tiny
garden out on his back porch.
The Japanese riverstones lead
me to the doorway
as someone dove into the rush
of a near-by pool behind the
well-pruned bushes.
I want to tell everyone to keep married.
I want to lay out all day in the hot heat
on a lounge chair,
as a neighbor in her dark sunglasses
says, “Nice day.”
I could then even raise my cool drink
of lemonade up to the horizon
of her summer hat as I nod and
think twice about what Dad had
offered,
later in life--his good company.

Winner of True Blue Contest, Honorable
Mention '03