Father

Father by

May 19, 1999

Today you would be ninety-seven

if you had lived, and we would all be

miserable, you and your children,

driving from clinic to clinic,

an ancient, fearful hypochondriac

and his fretful son and daughter,

asking directions, trying to read

the complicated, fading map of cures.

But with your dignity intact

you have been gone for twenty years,

and I am glad for all of us, although

I miss you every day — the heartbeat

under your necktie, the hand cupped

on the back of my neck, Old Spice

in the air, your voice delighted with stories.

On this day each year you loved to relate

that at the moment of your birth

your mother glanced out the window

and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today

lilacs are blooming in side yards

all over Iowa, still welcoming you.