It's funny. I don't know why I feel neglectful if I haven't written anything in this blog for a few days, except that I know it has something to do with my sense of uber responsibility. I also don't know why I feel compelled to add today a half-finished poem I began in the 90s (1990s) for my father, a man with whom I had almost entirely no relationship. Maybe it's because last night I saw the beautifully made film Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), and one of the actors reminded me of a landlord we had in Ottawa (right down to the 1980's butterscotch-hued London Fog all-weather coat), and I have always made a connection between this man and my father. Anyway, the day is too beautiful and Lake Simcoe is waiting, and Oedipus is far from my thoughts at the moment.
Travelogue
You looked like a sea captain’s son
Sitting in the corner with your cap on
Next to the hi-fi
Listening to
Just what makes that little old ant?
Hardly a boy your scotch glass
Tilted ice melting eyes
Filmy from early glaucoma
Hiding tears for your dead friend
Asking for a smoke
You muttered something about
Your golf game and
A holiday in the Bahamas
Where women with big breasts you said
Served tropical drinks with tall straws.
You mumbled that he had died
On his boat alone bravely
And with humour while the smoke
Rose up around your silver hair
Let’s dance you said to me
So dance we did around in circles
Saying nothing singing songs with
Frank Sinatra as if sadness never touched you
Like poison to your system
Grieving fatal to your will
You would have died there
In the corner the record skipping
Your scotch bleeding into the carpet
High hopes springing up around you
A schoolboy in a sea captain’s hat.
Jennifer Coffey
Archived Saturday, August 4, 2007
