My father was a philosopher, or liked to pretend as much.
He couldn’t look at the world for what it was, but rather what it represented.
“This tree isn’t just a tree,” he’d say,
“It’s a symbol of the wisdom of man,
growing until it’s cut away, stripped, and used for God knows what purposes.”
To me, it was just a wooden friend made for climbing.
There was a frozen lake near us he often gazed over while driving to the 7-11 for cigs.
He said it was a perfect image of impermanence:
a beautiful crystal sea with solid skin, soon to melt, and become a bathtub to wash the local compost clean.
My brother and I go sledding on our snow days.
If you don’t, well, it might as well be a weekend,
or a grading day,
or Flag Day.
We’d slide across that glassy plain on our bellies,
our hearts beating through the ice;
music for the fishes below.
It was in those days that I thought of my life as perfect,
and I realized all the possibilities that the fire of my youth could fuel.
Well, one day our hearts beat too fast,
or too strong,
or the fish wished to meet the musicians, or something happened for reasons which I still can’t come to terms with.
The glass… it shattered.
And my brother fell through the other side,
to dance with the herrings and sturgeons till he was all out of breath.
And he tired quickly of the dance.
And I wasn’t a strong enough partner to lead him off the dancefloor.
My father, when he heard the news of his son’s new hobby,
it was as though every book he ever read,
and every four-syllable word he ever knew,
and every overdrawn metaphor he ever spoke were all just a weird series of lies.
He swam into his bedroom, and through a blizzard of thrown pictures, sobs, and ***** he calmed himself to stupor.
He went in the room my father, the intellectual, and came out as Roy, the sorrow-drunken spatter of roadside slush.
Whenever we pass the lake, he no longer comments on what it represents, but rather what it is:
“a ******** graveyard for innocent little angels.”
The world is no longer a set of symbols, but a tangible environment,
though one he looks at through a lens of tears and amber bloodshots.
My father is no longer a philosopher, but a poet, spitting out sonnets of regret and rage.
And as for me, I haven’t really much to talk about.
I guess I’m sitting stagnant, frozen.
I don’t want to be like my father, but I’m realizing it’s inevitable.
I haven’t felt anything genuine since his heart beat its last song.
Hell, I don’t even sled on snow days anymore.
They might as well be a weekend,
or a grading day,
or Flag Day.