My Father's Song

My father’s song…a symphony of so many things said and unsaid…waxes and wanes in my heart and in my memory as the winds of forgiveness shift and the vagaries of love and honor and regret and disappointment take their turns coming to the fore.

My father’s song…sweet soul music in better moments…was distant and all but inaudible in so many cool hours of my youth…so far away as to not be a viable comfort in the wee hours of quiet, lonely nights…but there, however faintly, just the same.

My father’s song…a plaintive blues in waltz time…was ever a promise that ever lingered just outside the realms of my everyday world and my dreamtime fancies.

My father’s song…a bittersweet rhapsody…called to my mother’s mighty heart, to my brother’s fragile soul, to my own wistful imagination but never completely filled our beings as we would have sometimes liked.

My father’s song…a tender ballad of days forever gone and days yet to come…waxes and wanes…shines and darkens…lingers and dances away…forever in my mother’s knowing eyes…forever in my brother’s eternal memory…forever in my own cynical heart and in my ever hopeful soul.

- for Bud -