This is one of those poems that is so annoying vulnerable/intimate I have to give it a preface. I don't remember why I was at my father's desk on this morning in October, or why he was not at it as he usually is, but it doesn't really matter. Here is a poem about it. Don't be weird, family.
A Morning at My Father's Desk
Written October 18, 2017
A professional photographer took your parents picture.
It was the Christmas of 1999, their last one together,
and now they pause from a gold frame by the window.
How comforting to sit under their gaze, how luxurious
to look out and see a barbershop and someone else’s
empty rooftop garden, the university students meandering
down your street, under falling yellow leaves.
A coffee cup from Chicago is half full, half drunk,
its cold scent trailing over the faded wood grain.
Books currently being annotated, a dozen or so,
sit crisply at the desk edge by the wall, just beneath
five sealed graduate degrees in cream colored paper.
The smell of ganja wafts up from the avenue
and dissipates at the horizon, into a milky sky,
hovering between billowing cotton lace.
From afar you would not have chosen any of this,
the stack of boxes in the corner, frilly curtains,
a closet full of tools but empty of memories,
and yet here is the life you have made your own.
This is not the luxury of micromanagement but of
designated fragments and pieces formed gracefully,
the luxury of knowing absolutely your purpose,
whatever uncertainty, whatever you hold, wherever you go.
What a comfort it is for me to follow.
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