It is hard to say father;
the thought of you stumbles through me when I see
a Gerber baby food jar or a wooden pop crate.
Once you came to mind when I saw a Polish flag
on TV; that is humorous because
the only Pole I know is a pale man at the gym
whose left eye is shaped like a rotten pear.
Do you still burn your fingers when you
fall asleep smoking in a recliner?  I hope
you still do not trim your fingernails while
sitting on the toilet stool; that seems so un-American.
Today is your eighty-fourth birthday;
I hope wherever you are you do not think of me.

Hoka hey.*

Each day a death and a loss.
Old friends, old lovers, old heroes.
A brain that draws a blank.
Knees that hurt. A back that aches.
Tentative steps down the Ghost Road.
An age of slowly letting go.
A time of things falling away
like leaves from an autumn maple.
Where we all go, in our own time.
A track through twilight to darkness
and then, we hope, into the light.

Some are lissome, jowly,
blossomed or pocked,  teeth

of old horses—eyes white as flour,
a few clubfoot with sisters

pregnant as October gourds.  Not
Norman Rockwell’s Americans,

but they are us and live in lopsided
bungalows with leaky roofs,

heaved sidewalks, bare
refrigerators.