Last Advice

The night before my father died
I dreamed he was back home,
and I in my old room
on the third floor, and he
was calling up to me
from the bottom of the stairs
some advice I couldn’t hear
or recall the next day when,
standing over him
back in the ICU
full of the chirping of machines
we had decided to unplug,
I remembered the dream
and heard him call my name.

Credit

Copyright © 2015 by Jeffrey Harrison. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 22, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“‘Last Advice’ is from a series of poems about my father’s death. The house in the poem is the house where I grew up, outside of Cincinnati, and where my parents were still living when my father died. In fact, I was sleeping in that house when I had the dream, though not in my old room on the third floor.”
—Jeffrey Harrison