The Paddock Review

Lake Side Burial

 

This is not a poem about Water

because poems rhyme,

you always said.

 

But this one won’t.

I can’t make it.

The sounds won’t come out of air.

The words won’t form rows.

They are all just vowels and consonants

flying through my head

like memories of walks through the pasture on the farm,

or sitting on the floor next to you,

zipping and unzipping the zippers on the pant leg of your flight suit.

 

You did not go gentle into life.

For right or wrong,

you raged against the mold that you were given.

 

For years, I reached for you.

Finally caught hold.

 

A leap of faith that landed me on a sounding board

garnered me not just a distant hero 

or even the father I always dreamed you’d be

but a close friend.

No rhymes reveal the magnitude of this gift of time.

Yes, I know this isn’t a poem,

just the words I was able to crash land on rocky terrain. 

This is just a sentiment as we bequeath you

not to earth but to water

because you were a man of water and air

not the earth

to lay long in a box of wood.

 

I won’t go to the church yard  

or sit by a grave.

I’ll paddle the lake 

or sit by the shore at sunset.

 

I’ll think of you wandering the waters,
exploring the depths,

like Ulysses, a soldier seeking distant shores.

 

And I’ll remember you and me

on the deck

watching the sun slide slowly into the lake

admiring how the rays are a bit more pink today, 

then going in after dark

when the bugs start biting

to watch an old cowboy movie

or talk of books and birds, 

and always stay up passed my bedtime,

like I once dreamed we would. 

 

This poem is from the book Why Would You Leave Me? A Memoir by Leslie Harper Worthington (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/why-would-you-leave-me-a-memoir-by-leslie-harper-worthington/