Separation is the necessary condition for light.
so it came to me to
carry the abandoned
mattress to the attic
a month dead my father
waited hillside in the field
surrounding his house
I was glad to see him
to remember when
the fathers seemed
generic related a class
of things as uniform as trees
are when you don’t know
their names a stand
of them across the field
I want to say autumn
aspens the late fathers
blonde as early evening
wind startles their eyes
and makes of your name
a sail a boat above roots
that rise to stem that rise
to leaf his door and cornices
his felt hat and mattress
empty it feels like forever
above the flickering field
the fathers shrinking
far beneath our feet
for Lisa Fishman
Copyright © 2013 by Brian Teare. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on October 22, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
"I don't usually remember my dreams. But after a poet-friend wrote to tell me of her father's death, my own dead father appeared to me in a strangely sweet tableau. I don't know if an elegy can properly be a gesture of friendship, but in the same way her news triggered my father's brief return, the poem responds to the gift of her poems with a gift of poetry."
—Brian Teare
Brian Teare
Born in Athens, Georgia in 1974, Brian Teare is the author of several poetry collections, including The Room Where I Was Born (University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), which was awarded both the Brittingham Prize and the 2004 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry.