A Sudden Change of Seasons

In the stacks of a crowded bookstore,
searching for rare books
in ancient Greek and Latin,

my father disappears. The aisles
are now oddly empty. Only my mother
and me, bumping into each other

in our frantic search.
It is later
than we thought. We’ve missed

the downtown bus, and lunch in Liverpool
at a outdoor café. In the sun. Between planters
of petunias and golden

honey locusts, we watch for my father.
I think I see him,
an anonymous man

in a brown felt hat and flapping trench coat
headed our way with a package of books
tied in brown twine. The bus

blocks him from sight, won’t stop
when I try to flag it down. When it is gone
without us, my father is gone again, too.

I think he’s vanished into the city until
I spot him sledding with a group of children,
running up the snowy hill with an air mattress.

Face full of fun and light, he turns,
waves once,
and continues on without us.



Mary Stebbins
For Pa
[050409-3c, 020217-2x, 1]
Available

This poem was taken directly from a dream. The dream provided a metaphor for my father’s death. The task, as in all poems, is to put the dream events in concise clear language. I am attempting to move toward that goal with this poem. Mary