Father's Day is Sunday. This poem seems fitting.. I like the line "his eyes by now long adjusted to the dark. Mine were just now opening." That says so much about parents and children of all ages. They always have so much more knowledge, see so much more. I know this, I'm not sure my own kids have figure it out yet. : )
Sitting Alone in the Middle of the Night
Maybe it was summer and I was back home for a while
working to pay off debts from school, painting white
barns and long field fences and on off-days baling hay.
It was hot then in Ohio and sometimes so dry the corn
or the soybeans would fail. I'd get up at two or three
in the morning to find my way to the kitchen for water
and he'd be sitting there in a kind of outline,
smoking and staring at something far, his eyes by now
long adjusted to the dark. Mine were just now opening.
Nothing would be said, since there was nothing to say.
He was dying, he was turning into stone. The little
I could see I could see already how much heavier
he made the air, heavy enough over the days that
summer
you could feel in the house the pull of the earth.
working to pay off debts from school, painting white
barns and long field fences and on off-days baling hay.
It was hot then in Ohio and sometimes so dry the corn
or the soybeans would fail. I'd get up at two or three
in the morning to find my way to the kitchen for water
and he'd be sitting there in a kind of outline,
smoking and staring at something far, his eyes by now
long adjusted to the dark. Mine were just now opening.
Nothing would be said, since there was nothing to say.
He was dying, he was turning into stone. The little
I could see I could see already how much heavier
he made the air, heavy enough over the days that
summer
you could feel in the house the pull of the earth.
"Sitting Alone in the Middle of the Night" by Stanley Plumly,
from Orphan Hours. © W.W. Norton & Company, 2012.
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