Poem for my Father

The Eternal Trail

Photo by Jackson Blackhurst on Unsplash

Your stage four Melanoma changes

Everything.

Sometimes, like now, I stand outside on the old stone porch, in the dark, listening to the wind rustling the leaves of the trees surrounding the backyard. An occasional dog barks far off in the distance. The red, gold and blue lights twinkle like diamonds down below in Santa Barbara.

It’s then—in that heathen silence—that I think of you.

Or when I’m hiking, like I did just the other day. Rattlesnake Canyon. The fresh rushing creek right alongside the narrow, rocky trail. It’s then that I feel your spirit inside me—all those trips we took when I was young, as a kid, in my teens, my twenties; our final trip together when I was thirty, in 2013, Pine Mountain, Ojai, middle of winter, thick snow:

I remember I got ahead of you a few hundred yards; the snow was deep; the pines were thick and cold; you called out to me and for a few minutes I didn’t call back. I wanted to feel lost, the way I still felt inside, even then. I wanted to feel like you needed to know I was there.

All those backpacking trips, just us two, hardly any language expressed verbally; only the soft wind through the trees, that sound like far-off traffic, and our boots cluffing the earth, our silence both unbothered and unbearable.

We were always awkward around each other. Different values, different generations, different needs. You wanted to be distracted and sneak into life silently;

I wanted

To

announce

My brilliance

To

The world.

Now? Now you’re slowly slipping from your mortal coil. I am forty, in love, ready. The hole you will leave is a great dark abyss. But I know.

And you know:

We’ll always be on that eternal trail together.

In spirit.