My Dead Father

My Dead Father 

Like ice melting in my mind 

A river

An indefinable flowage of soul

Something I built brick by brick 

That now lies before me blown to smithereens 

Dead and yet

Oddly still alive 

As ice when it melts 

They say he will live in our memories 

But that’s not the place I feel him most 

It’s here in the pads of my fingers 

The music floating to me on air 

The ache in my gut when 

Two highly decorated soldiers 

Fold a flag 

Staring at each other with a secret military language 

A language my father spoke 

Perhaps I learned this language by osmosis 

Because I seem to hear what they are saying with their eyes 

Something I can’t repeat 

Because that is the secret 

It’s not a word 

It’s simply understood 

Just like my father’s eyebrows in their infinite expressions

Of humor 

Of approval or disapproval 

Of aw or surprise 

Of dejectedness or loneliness 

Of drunkenness 

Of bliss in mid-cha cha cha 

Of eating fried platanos with ketchup

Of sleeping

Of being gone 

Of no eyebrows 

Of my own eyebrows becoming like his 

I look in the mirror and raise one just like he did 

Tomorrow has arrived 

And My Father’s body is ash

Is a particle in the mouth of a fish 

Is the memory of that fish floating out to sea

Is me here in this bed 

Typing, typing