Another Poem About My Father

last year I had this recurring dream

I dreamt it seven times

•

then my father died

•

in the dream I had a phone call

from the CPR express office

to please come down and pick

up a package I don’t know

what the hurry was when

I arrived I had to stand

on the platform waiting for the train

for what seemed hours

at last it slowly drew into Saskatoon

the square baggage car opened

and there was the freight – my father

asleep in his old plush chair

•

his thatch of hair

tousled like badly bundled reeds

he puffed and grunted a little

in his sleep, he wore

his frayed tweed jacket

its lapels

snowed with the usual cigar ash

•

I could not speak

put out my hand

to brush away the whitish flakes

and burned my finger

on a glowing spark

~~~

when I was seven I asked him

whether the living

could send letters upward

to the dead

“you are thinking of kites”

he said

“bird kites or paper kites?”

I enquired watching a hawk

in the sky, thinking of the

correspondence I had lately started

with my uncle Thomas who

admitted to being “a grand

old man of 43” and who therefore

could not be long for this world

•

my father’s eyes followed mine

to the bird spiralling upwards

in the rainy heavens