The Old Man

i've been dreaming lately

of an old man 

that i'm sure is me

in a future that i seem to fear

sitting on a bench, in one example

in some park, looking inward

while casting a gaze out for something lost

i know it's me now

that i think of it because

i recognize the sting of a clenched heart

after a love has been wrenched violently from it

the way a blow hurts in winter:

a wringing crack on the skin
on a bitter day

frozen flesh rapped against stone

the man in my dream looks

for someone long blown away

a girl now years beyond their last

engagement in a sunny field when she was a year old

back then, they sat together in a field

the warmth a rapture

of brilliance on them

her infant head pushed against his cheek in love

she clutched a blade of grass

ready for the mouth

but instead pressed it into his raised palm

as an offering

now his heart leaps at finding her again

among a clutch of girl-friends

all of whom are just barely teenagers

and they preen together while walking his way

he sits taller

and picks at himself, straightening a shirt

and ironing his worn pants with 

aged palms, of course fruitlessly

and she comes, and then goes

they all look - all those fluttering birds -

at the old man fussing with his clothes

and they laugh

they all look - all those fluttering birds - 

except her

he affixes his eyes to her face

which remains bowed in a gesture of shame

the expression of someone who knows

yet desires to be elsewhere for it

and the moment is past

and the search is over for the man

who found what he was looking for:

a girl who became his only ghost

when we were children

my sister and i sat with our father

and made of him in our own way

while he watched television news

 i, sitting behind him on our couch,

combed his hair with his small black comb

(that i always fetched from his breast pocket)

the teeth of it raking a meager thatch  

she, sitting at his feet at the ends of stretched-out legs

untied and retied his shoelaces with a girl's delicacy

the shoes he wore to work as a teacher

 as weathered as our grandmother's face

his presence at our tedious

sessions was the love

that remains undefined 

 children fashion a form

of their fathers, when allowed

(a  father who abuses it is bankrupt)

by using what they have in hand

a comb

a shoelace

a blade of grass

and if the form be made of

beauty and grace

and if the form be made of

love and patience

then the distance of a thousand

years will not

encumber the memory of their

truth

i beg of time this consideration then:

to let the hands of my children

 form something of me

close to that of my father's

so that they, wherever they may be found,

and no matter the length of our time together

will know me

as i know him

and make folly the nightmare-fears

of a someday old man