Is This How Our Children Know Us?

Age comes to my father as a slow 
slipping: the leg that weakens will
barely support him, the curtain of mist that falls over one eye. Years, like 
pickpockets, lift his concentration,
memory, fine sense of direction. The car, 
as he drives, drifts from lane to lane
like a raft on a river, speeds and slows 
for no reason, keeps missing turns.

As my mother says, “He’s never liked, 
to talk about feelings,” but tonight
out walking, slow to match his pace— 
his left leg trailing a little like
a child who keeps pulling on your hand—he says, 
“I love you so much.” Darkness, and the sense 
we always have that each visit may be
the last, have pushed away years of restraint.

A photograph taken of him teaching— 
white coat, stethoscope like a pet snake 
around his neck, chair tipped back
against the lecture-room wall—shows
a man talking, love of his work lighting
his face—in a way we seldom saw at home. 
I answer that I love him, too, but,
hardly knowing him, what I love
is the way reserve has slipped from
his feeling, like a screen suddenly
falling, exposing someone dressing or
washing: how wrinkles ring a bent neck,
how soft and mutable is the usually hidden flesh.

Slipping by Joan Aleshire                          from:  http://fleetinghourglass.blogspot.ca/2012/04/slipping-by-joan-aleshire.html


Watch this video: http://vimeo.com/groups/spiritatworkcreative/videos/39676342

Eliza - dog tired, August 18, 2014