How I Write My Songs

My analyst recommends I try talking with my father. The problem is, he died in 1966, when I was six. So it's difficult. I'm going to try writing some poems, see if I can trick myself into doing what she recommends, see if it takes me anywhere useful.

Idiots

Your picture on my mantle: sweat beads up
a high forehead, eyes glare
through thick horn-rimmed glasses,
slicked wavy hair, suit and thin tie,
hint of a grimace. My mother
sees it and sighs, always, says,
always, "He was so sick then."
It's mostly what I have:
a black and white of a sick man
I don't remember. Though there's
an image or two: sitting up in bed,
shades down, flicker and chatter and crack
of Saturday afternoon baseball;
in your office, Susie and I
warbling a Christmas song
into a tape recorder, laughing
at the play-back. Did you sing along?
I doubt it. You held the microphone,
snapped the camera shutter,
stood back and watched us
splash and ride walking stick horses
and dress up like idiots. We have
those pictures too. Once in a while
you'd say "Say cheese,"
and we'd turn back to you
and say "Cheese," then return
to our games. Then one day you grew quiet
for good, and we turned back
to an empty front lawn--your parents'--
alongside the garden, hills of potatoes
we could have dug together,
enormous yellow squash we all could have picked
and carved as pumpkins. I'm told
at the funeral home I piped up
"Are you sure he's dead, Mommy?
He looks like he's just sleeping."
Of course you sleep still,
and every so often we look back again,
watch for a return that only an idiot,
or a child, could hope for.