Tomorrow is Father’s Day and this is a late regret to chalk up to a life in ebbtide.  But with the head on my shoulders today, I wish there had been times to talk of heart concerns.  Life was to be mountains for me to climb and I could have used his hand to hold.  Talk while you both are within arm’s reach.

The Strange Bequest. . . 

There was a man, a slim man,
whose head was bedecked
with a white cloud and
whose eyes saw dreams
he could not articulate.

He sat one day staring into space
and when I questioned him, he said
‘I am sitting and watching the grass grow.’
I hesitated far too long and have lived to regret it.

I wish the courage had been mine
to have asked him to share his dreams with me.
For he bequeathed to me a mind
that does not rest.

I have the thought that his father and
father before him wrestled
the same misty vision which now
is mine to set in motion.

I question this strange bequest,
for I have not the staunch heart required
to lay to rest my ancestor’s anguish.

Papa, I plead now,
to replace my heart with hot ore,
inject me with a vial of celestial courage,
to fuse my spine with tempered steel.

There is so little time.