Poem a day 2015: 11

Dear Dad

Now that you’re dead, well and truly, I can love you

the way I never could when you were alive:

I can admire your once-upon-a-time dashing good looks,

the way dark hair curled over your clear brow, your

penetrating gaze and dimpled movie-star smile, and your

luxurious waxed Zapata mustache.

At your funeral, Lizzie said, looking at old photos:

“Wow, Grandpa Schorr was a total babe,”

and even your wistful baby pictures excited in us all

nothing but sympathy and a little good heartache

for what we knew would be a hard and lonely life.

Now I can admit that you were an artist with the camera,

that -- looking through your telephoto lens --

you captured souls --

dreams of escape, achingly exiled moments, pleas

for recognition, for scraps of fellow feeling or

just a moment of human kindness

that somehow you must have provided.

Now I can thank you for taking us out of the States,

for teaching us another language,

for pushing us past the usual, for making us

despise that usual, and even

for forcing us into pain and sometimes shame

as strange strangers in a land that

smiled at us but didn’t really want us.

Like you, it made us stronger, forged our anxieties

into chainmail.

Now I can admit that you loved us all

the same, the best you could,

broken as you were by your bent life, your

secrets, and that you loved me

as your own child,

because (as you might’ve said) I belonged to you,

you’d put your defiant stamp on me,

you’d clipped and twisted and pruned me

the way you thought any good father should.

You’d given me your name,

and defended me against my enemies,

swelled with pride when I won awards and

ranted and railed against me when I failed.

And when we’d all abandoned you

to your rat-infested apartment,

when you were slowly dying,

lost to the bottle, drifting in false

memories and ancient accusations,

writing down what was left to you

in scraps and fevered dreams,

you still loved me enough

to write my name,

to say (to my shame) that I was good.