Elegy for My Dad

A sailor

You moved about the house

With feet that expected the deck to move

As the ship steadily traversed the supple backs of waves

In a sea as deep as you were buried in your thoughts

Your first lesson was that I could talk and be acknowledged

Yet unheard

You showed me a love of hard work and a job well done

Stubbornness and intransigence and harsh judgment

I found the path to your approval

Guarded by a door

Fashioned in the shape of someone who was not me

Yet we shared games of cribbage

And your smoke second hand

As if we were in the non-com officer’s lounge on some Coast Guard cutter

Rolling gently

As the cancer gradually ate you

And radiation treatments destroyed your teeth

And your ability to taste or smell

You took your liquefied meals alone

Gradually receding from us

Like the tide

The smell of cancer burned into my memory

At the end

Fed life through tubes

Until your pain conquered your desire

Twelve years of battle finally over

Strange now you should finally come to me

All golden and shining

Beaming love and approval

Like dawn over the bay 

For a moment only, but that’s okay

Because I get the message

And now I can accept you, too.