Remembering Dad: Part 3 - The Last Good Day

In 2016 I was invited by my friend/poet Anja Koenig to contribute to an unusual poet anthology organized by Helen Klein Ross. The project involved having 67 poets write a poem from a prompt extracted from a 19^th century guide for travelers called The Traveler’s Vade Mecum.  Contributors included “some of the most celebrated poets working today,” including former poet laureate, Billy Collins and Pulitzer Prize winner, Frank Bidart.

I obviously didn’t belong in the group, but I would never turn down a chance to be published.

My prompt was, “The Roads are Indifferent.”   My father had died the year before at the age of 92.  The photo here was taken six months before he died.

The Roads are Indifferent

I drove my father to the VA

for a swallow test.

He failed.

He used to be stronger than me.

Taller, better all around.

I took a towel and wiped

his face. 

His big farmboy hands,

knobby and translucent,

shook as he clung to his walker

for the long march down

the fluorescent-lighted gauntlet

to the parking lot.

At the funeral

his friends

said I looked just like him.