Dialogue

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Dialogue (see in Gallery / Store) | Image by Bruce Harris

The father who can’t believe he is a father

who is never this old in any real imagined future

whose body is never failing

whose mind is never fogged

who conceives of this circumstance of age

but doesn’t know how to feel it until he does

believes he should sit with the teenage son

another reality

a grateful reality

that couldn’t possibly be

In the room with the glass walls

and limbs greening from the winter’s sleep

and birds landing and leaving

while the man and the boy

talk about loss

Not loss of life or love

loss of a game that in the moment

feels like a shattering of the

heart’s feeble pane

The father blurry-eyed

a restless sleep solving for the boy’s pain

running through the platitudes of so many

things he’s experienced to be untrue

knows he is up for the day

with the birds’ first calls

with the sliver of pre-dawn sun

and asks them without answer

what is true?

He imagines telling the boy

who just yesterday was lost

in the refractions of excuse

that maybe the only value of

the game they play

the millions of repetitions

mastering the impossible

of the mirage of achievements in an ever-glinting sea

is to find yourself in those few moments

you’re convinced are defining

when outcome is only that moment away

when fear and hope and grit and cowardice

reflect with the same open-eyed

heart-pounding offer

an extended hand

introducing you to yourself

The father wants to say

accept the offer

win or lose

the moment is a gift

This is what the man determines to be said

That should help, he says to nobody but the dog

This is what he has learned losing in games

more than winning

Maybe, the boy says

Sun now risen

leaves unfolding

dreams dreamt

in the lostness of his sound sleep

And the boy gets up to go where he’s going to go

And the man goes about his day

doing what he’s going to do