MY DEAD FATHER, THE BIRD — Poetry for People Who Wonder About Poetry

MY DEAD FATHER, THE BIRD

Backstroking in a pool

on my father’s birthday,

twenty-two years gone—

and there he is, circling,

a bird in the cloudless sky.

My soul guide. My father—

I mean you.

At the pool’s far end my brother

works lotion into his pale skin.

Six grandkids between us, chilling

in the hot springs;

Dad only held two before he died.

The bird seems pleased by this brood—

but honestly, Dad—it’s been a long week.

I wonder why my father

comes back as a bird, not a lion or a deer.

He disliked flying, though he loved vacations.

Maybe he’s a bird because our last name

means pigeon or dove—

not Cardinal, not Eagle,

teams we despised.

Last night my brother said he once found you

on the twelfth-floor terrace,

looking like a man (and not a bird) about to step over

the edge. Business was terrible.

I won’t ask, not yet.

You let out a high Yiddish chirp—

for me to give my brother

a couple of pats on his big belly

and tell him to lay off the doughnuts.

I turn over—showing off a little—

kick into a quick crawl across the pool.

Dad wasn’t much of a swimmer,

and in a bathing suit not much to look at:

narrow shoulders, a ribbon of chicken wire

down his chest, gazelle legs,

toenails, fungus-yellow as rotten teeth.

His friends, though, found him comforting

as an old robe, or a new rug.

He had that easy, generous way;

his presence essential

to tennis games, to breakfast bagels,

to watching the Buckeyes.

Mom disapproved of his unvetted friendships

with strangers. “Jerry, you don’t know him,”

she’d say. “Herman’s sister’s son-in-law

who lives in Mexico!”

He’d wave away her skepticism

like smoke from a grill.

His heart was open to possibilities—

until it closed, mid-rally, on a tennis court.

He always said that’s the way to go out—

“Maybe you’ll get lucky,”

said it for sports, for lust,

for life.

“Maybe you’ll get lucky”—his benediction.

It covered deals, love, the dice at midnight:

may doors open,

may you walk through them, and be loved.

He never taught me to swim,

only insisted on the ocean.

Once a rip tide took him; he flipped

to that sad windmill backstroke,

arced to shore and kissed the sand.