On the day of all souls in the fall
as leaves lose luster to winter’s bane
my father’s shade returns to call
while I walk along a splintered lane:

His memory murmurs in a darkened nook
of years of yearning and wasted days,
as the distance that filled up the book
of our lives still grows as I turn to grey.

The care he’d showed I did not feel
as the pillars of our bridge began to crack.
Too late, I turned back to heal
the fallen span that we now lacked.

By then his old mind’s lantern had failed;
the new light I’d shone back went unseen
and broken arches into a chasm trailed
where once a golden bridge had briefly been.

Across the valley, dark, deep, and wide,
a spectral stretch of stones appears
to shine as a silvery coach now rides
across, to bring two sundered shadows near.

Now on this day of all souls missed
by those who find themselves left behind,
one faithful departed returns to kiss
the forehead of a son’s reopened mind.