Keith Recollections from his Daughter I am unable to remember when I met my father. He told me he recalled the moment even though The nurse thrust a substance upon his person To keep him (well mustached at 23 years of age) from fainting And falling on the hospital floor in a heap. He admitted he liked both: The baby and the intervention. It was a good day. I remember my father busy in the mornings writing something important. Then he’d come out of his lair for coffee. He was adored and admired for his charm and wit but he also drank coffee. He ground the beans first. It’s not a secret to making good coffee. When I was a young girl, my father sometimes invited me To go with him to the municipal dump. I thought it was very exciting and I always said yes. I also hung around him and his buddy Richard, who bought me Steamed clams in Chinatown, but only occasionally so I Didn’t miss too much school. But I Tended not to go to school before lunchtime anyway. My father and I enjoyed Amtrak together. Multiple times. My father taught me the best way to collect money at a golf club. He’d never taken a short iron rod in a brown paper bag to a golf course, But he thought I should know about golfers’ kneecaps As part of my education. When I was fourteen my father bought me a piano, And, circumventing the school system, he found me private French lessons. Following up on these two notions later: I moved to Paris and studied music. Simple as that. I once asked him what he thought about reincarnation. He stared at me and did not utter a single word. I believe he had a point. The last thing he wrote me was a postcard of a stone frog. It said: “Persephone I’ve got a place in the CHOIR!” “I can’t wait!!” he added along with a large splat of ink at the end. Then he croaked. Tears ran into my coffee Feeling salty, I took the dog to the park. She likes the park and I do too. She’s slow, selective of hearing, bow legged, Benefits from poor eyesight and just like my premonition I watched her slide from behind a favored tree down the slope Enacting the part of a slow motion replay Plonk into the canal, panic registering in her cloudy eyes. It figures, I thought, that I end up jumping into an Amsterdam canal The day my father is cremated, Separate elements, each of us chasing a dog.
Categories: Poetry