Heather Babcock's Blog - Posts Tagged "grief"
In Memory Of
I don’t need today
To remember
There were no clouds that summer
Only a blue sun
Breaking the necks of dandelions and
Scaring the grass white.
I don’t need a bouquet
Of the 1,827 calendar leaves
The petals are dry but
The thorns are still fresh.
I don’t need a moment of silence
To hear
The lonely screams
Of a telephone
Unanswered.
- Heather Babcock, copyright 2016
To remember
There were no clouds that summer
Only a blue sun
Breaking the necks of dandelions and
Scaring the grass white.
I don’t need a bouquet
Of the 1,827 calendar leaves
The petals are dry but
The thorns are still fresh.
I don’t need a moment of silence
To hear
The lonely screams
Of a telephone
Unanswered.
- Heather Babcock, copyright 2016
A Poem for my Father
A Poem for My Father by Heather Babcock
My father was born on Atlas Avenue
St. Clair and Dufferin
During the third year of the Great Depression.
My father loved animals
-his mother hated them-
His pet was a medium sized turtle who lived in his backyard.
One day my father came home from school to find that the turtle was gone.
“Ran away,” his mother said.
So my father ran away too -
A white lie about his birth date and he was a sailor
Spinning dials in the belly of a ship.
Older men hooked their medals and pretty girls pinned their dreams onto him
Until he got so thirsty and tired that the Navy doctor said
“You’ll lose an eye or a leg if you keep going.”
So my father traded his white bell bottomed uniform, a pet monkey and the sempiternal seas
For a collared shirt and tie, three quarrelsome women and syringes fat with insulin.
It was during the third year of the millennial financial crisis when the jelly bean shaped doctor with the jack-in-the-box voice said
“Your father is brain dead and he will never wake up.”
As I looked upon my father –
White cotton pads over his eyes,
A machine filling his body like a balloon –
I thought about the Navy, the turtle and the monkey
And I wondered about my father’s fears and what the music inside his head had sounded like
And I thought:
I’ll never know the name of the girl
My father first kissed.
(Written by Heather Babcock, 2015)
My father was born on Atlas Avenue
St. Clair and Dufferin
During the third year of the Great Depression.
My father loved animals
-his mother hated them-
His pet was a medium sized turtle who lived in his backyard.
One day my father came home from school to find that the turtle was gone.
“Ran away,” his mother said.
So my father ran away too -
A white lie about his birth date and he was a sailor
Spinning dials in the belly of a ship.
Older men hooked their medals and pretty girls pinned their dreams onto him
Until he got so thirsty and tired that the Navy doctor said
“You’ll lose an eye or a leg if you keep going.”
So my father traded his white bell bottomed uniform, a pet monkey and the sempiternal seas
For a collared shirt and tie, three quarrelsome women and syringes fat with insulin.
It was during the third year of the millennial financial crisis when the jelly bean shaped doctor with the jack-in-the-box voice said
“Your father is brain dead and he will never wake up.”
As I looked upon my father –
White cotton pads over his eyes,
A machine filling his body like a balloon –
I thought about the Navy, the turtle and the monkey
And I wondered about my father’s fears and what the music inside his head had sounded like
And I thought:
I’ll never know the name of the girl
My father first kissed.
(Written by Heather Babcock, 2015)
