You were waiting for the ambulance
when I had called you from overseas.
Swiftly had I returned to Canada.
Stuck in your apartment for fourteen days
I couldn’t see you –
and you were gone.
I had the cash. But no credit card.
I called Pop. He had a credit card.
The cremation was carried out.
I hoped a father and son could come together.
I called Pop several times last year
hoping COVID would unveil the shared sun
long-hidden of a father and a son.
After the 3rd or 4th try
he said he’d get back to me,
and after a year he still
hasn’t gotten back to me.
I’m sleeping in your bed now.
The old heater’s Tap Tap, each pause between
like a distant undulation or crested wave
carries along some memory of you,
some pauses too
reminding me of bills long unpaid,
of my resources dwindling away,
of the welfare officer I’d be seeing soon,
of the new landlord renovating the house
who is gently prodding me to leave.
In December when the the wind
turns trees into paralytics with gnarled hands,
boughs creaking and knocking,
at least the birds return to their nests,
at least the birds have one another.
A few times I reached out –
but no one from Pop’s family
has, in the wake of your passing…
Lord, I don’t invite doubt –
but doubt and confusion are my lot.
I’m one now looking for work,
worried, apprehensive, overwrought,
longing for a sliver of grace, Your touch or trace,
longing to know where I belong, with whom,
longing to find my nest or place.
Lord, how many pious women and men
reached out to You for protection?
How many pleaded – yet were destroyed?
Such is the doubt that swells like some infection.
I feel some of Your warmth in the worlds
of my cats’ eyes, in gleams of eyes and fur,
in the soothing kneading, massage and purr.
I’ll be leaving soon, only to resume
my wandering, inhabit an overseas room
that doesn’t belong to me, leaving behind
my little children like a wounded animal on a plain,
a poor parent, his children now his solace and pain,
the last vestige of a world dearly loved.
Tap Tap. The old heater. The old piano next to your bed.
I sleep long hours, Mittens lying next to my head,
and long to catch sight of you in my dreams,
laugh and celebrate or weep with you
or hear the heavenly blue
the pianist plays into being –
or sink into deep sleep
barring that hearing, that seeing.
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