Every Day (My Father)
After work, I would watch my father wash his hands.
The water ran black underneath, as if he was washing
away the top soil from his palms. Black as his jacket
wrought with smoke. Black as the shade over his father’s
face. When my father was my age, his father couldn’t
remember his name. Doesn’t water have memory?
Can this work from his hands wash down the drain
into rivers, climb into the storm clouds, and reach,
again, in ancient rain, his father’s sugarcane?
Can, somehow, this pain reach back to that moment?
In Puerto Rico, there is always rain – the same rain.
And in it I imagine a single black tear collapsing
into my grandfather’s eye and for that split second
he can see into today: ghosts in reverse; valleys
paved with city streets; skyscrapers overrun
with panapen; quenepas falling into pigeons;
my aged father standing side-by-side with his child-self,
waiting on the top of the hill for his father to call him.
My father washes his hands without ever looking up
at the mirror. He tells me he looks more like his mother.
***
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Photo by Dale Mastin /Flickr
The role of father at home is second to none when it come to discipline and providing for the entire family. I can still recall vividly as little kid how my father use to advice me to be patience with people and always speak the truth when the need arise. But today iam an adult iam always passing the same advice to my kids. My god continue to bless all father in the world.