What a Son Does

(For My Father)

What were you trying to tell me 
moments before you died? Reaching for me, 
your fingers like a book of broken matches. 
Will I get older lying in a hospital bed, 
not eating, 
as you did? I hoped you would never die,
but years become fragments of scroll 
I’ll spend my life placing edge 
near edge, learning to believe 
in spaces. 

Did I make you feel certain 
of what I would become? Rushing 
to the train set you built, tracks curving 
through a tunnel, trains ran between tall pines 
that never lost branches in a basement storm, 
arriving at a station.

Town had a bank, Main Street, commuters 
walking with purpose, one car at a red light, 
trees lined up that gave no sign of summer 
passing, a river, ping-pong table green, 
drifting to a harbor,

where I made a seashore of real sand, 
a rowboat, hitched to a dock. No coming or going 
of waves, two boys 
I cut out of cardboard 
fishing. They had time.

JOHN ROMAGNA

John Romagna began writing poetry after the death of his son, Tim. Writing keeps him connected with family, friends, and a community of writers. He lives in Clinton, New Jersey, with his wife, Karen, a landscape and seascape painter. He gains inspiration from the poetry of Mary Oliver and many others.