On Your 91st Birthday, Dad.

 

You lie in the bed, Dad,

Nodding and sleeping.

Waking,

Fearful and confused,

Barely speaking,

Lost and quietly raging

Behind your customary courtesy,

As they attend to you

Morning and night.

Your entire world

Sunken and sucked

Into that room.

Do they know that

This is not you ?

That you wandered,

Sported and played,

Lived and loved and lost

As they do,

As I do,

On the highways

And byways of your

City and country,

Where life still pulsates,

Unseen

Beyond the narrow

Confines of that window ?

 

(c) Billy Dunphy  05/01/2016