Baba

What do I call you?
Baba, Daddy,
Father, Friend
What do I call you?

How I looked so much like you,
I thought when we first met
Or did you look like me?
You see, me is the only part of you
I’d ever known.
How I’d written
and re-written this script
of our meeting!
We’d have an immediate connection
and our talk would be filled with reasons
to cushion all feelings of abandonment

I smiled as my hopes for a hug shrunk
with your outstretched hand;
your smile, a mirror image of mine
in definition and hesitation.
We brushed faltering over
Our lives,
Grazing over the turn of events
that brought me to meet you
for the first time when I was thirty
And you, almost seventy.

Two measly times I met you,
then you went and died
before I found the courage
to grab that hug from the dreams
of a little girl.
Or regale you with stories
of growing up
and seeing you in my mind’s eye,
tall and strong,
swinging me in powerful arms.

How do I mourn you?
Dad? Baba?
When all I saw was a man
way out of his prime
ambling in tired stride.
Through with the task of raising children,
and without doubt out of his depth
in filling the yawning void in my heart.

In my dreams
I can still hear that little girl’s laughter
as I smile at your still face
and the dreams that died with you.

(c)PoP
Feb 1 07