My Father Crying

I never saw my father crying.

Not even in the bedroom

standing in his dark blue suit,

smart and silent, staring

dry eyed into the mirror

on the day his father died.

When I was two

I saw my father in the hall

perching on a ladder,

cursing through his gritted teeth

the grey glistening globs of plaster

that plopped onto his upturned squinting face.

When I was seven

I saw my father in the living room.

sitting on the yellow easy chair,

clasping his knee with both hands.

throwing back his head,

As he laughed at my silly schoolboy joke.

When I was fourteen

I saw my father in the dining room.

sitting at the wooden table

with clenched fist and twisted mouth

because I, a stubborn adolescent,

refused to give my mother a goodnight kiss.

When I was eighteen

I saw my father in the kitchen

tearing pages with despairing Christian hands

from my saffron Buddhist book

casting them into the purging fire

that he hoped would bring us both back to God.

When I was twenty one

I saw my father in another room

lying still within a box of glass,

his pale body with dented head

wrapped in a white mortuary sheet.

He had never even left a note.

When I was twenty one

I held my father in a plastic flowered room.

Cradling in my weeping arms

his heavy cardboard urn of ash,

suddenly, I saw that my father had been crying,

all his desperate silent years.