My mother exalts her long-gone father.
Driving home, laments the failings of my father.
Sees her ex-husband in my excuses,
tells me: That’s just like your father.
On holiday, he sneaks away to work;
I take a work call. Like son, like father.
Before, I tried to outrun my shadow
when sun met twilight, like Earth’s late father.
God sacrificed his son for his life’s work.
So we sing heavenward to honor the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit—Forgive me,
for I have sinned, become my own father—
not who raised me, but those who claim me
as theirs. The stone-jawed men who father
havoc through absence, posture a myth for
any gaze. How many don’t know their father?
I’m at my kids’ school, bath time, rubbing their backs
before bed. They will know their father
as the one who showed up & always stayed,
bleary-eyed, did anything to father.
My mother fears she will be forgotten,
invoking Time, like others, as a father.
My wife notes the shifting sky above us.
What gravity gives birth to a father?
Copyright © 2025 by Carlos Andrés Gómez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 4, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.