From a Distance
Some people live their parent’s passing
like ghosts
winding and unwinding bandages
filling glasses, emptying bedpans
kissing gray foreheads
whispering candle blessings
Not I. Distance my anesthetic, I flew back
a thousand days to mother’s funeral
my father a shell shocked victim
clutching his torn clothing repeatedly
his muttering I could have done more
should have done more
lent no illumination
I listened, did not understand
Then came his own passing. Five a.m.
a distant phone call Your father is dead
a small bedroom, piles of uncompleted manuscripts,
clothes hung neatly over a chair
the synagogue he had attended now dusty echoes
consoling itself with old men and prayer books
I left clasping a sheaf of quotations
in a language that looked like shared guilt,
a face that appears in my mirror
which never leaned out to kiss my own
passing now like a memory
a wisp of disappearing cloud