Reasons for Not Sitting Still

“If I had the stars of the darkest night…”

--Bob Dylan

I sat down with good intensions
of writing a letter to my father
to tell him about my life, right now,
but lingered in the fact that it always
feels like a quarterly business report;
a laundry list of happenings he won’t
ever be a part of, special moments
never returned. I think about a poem

written by a friend darning losses
of important men: fathers and uncles
and brothers. And I wonder if your own
disappearance in the end will fill me
with regret, or worse yet, will I know
how to mourn something I never had.

Summer is lurking around spring’s
short corner, and the evening sings
with trains, smells of honeysuckle
and newly shorn grass; a few escaped
dandelions that survived the blades,
wave in the light breeze. I feel
ten years old—bewildered and curious
by your existence, wanting to have enough
strength to bridge this gap, to swing
on the stars of this night hoping for words
that rarely come. I am surprised how
my well runs dry and my tongue falls
mute in your presence.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009
Published by Not From Here, Are You? 6/09