What could my father do?
I realized when I was still small
that he couldn’t build of fix anything,
and later it occurred to me
that he had no original thoughts.
He could tell jokes that made people laugh,
keep track of money, mainly other people’s,
and serve on committees.
Not what a boy could care much about.
And another thing: he went to funerals.
Often in the evening, after the commute
into the city and back from the city,
he went out again, mildly against his will,
to the lodge or some church committee,
and often enough it was a funeral he attended.
It was a decency he had. I knew that,
maybe. But I would not have thought
he tended any mystery.
I have learned, only lately,
that when you sit in the front row
in the eternal weather of the funeral parlor,
it is surprising, and a relief,
to see the faces that appear before you
and pass by, not far from where he lies.
It is a mystery. Maybe
the decency itself is a mystery,
or maybe we cross from the one to the other
only on a bridge of grief.
My father’s father died
when my father was twenty-three.
My father was a man who held the cables.
And I have begun to go to funerals.