On
My Father's Blindness
Tom
Sheehan
Time
whispered when he had eyes,
a
deliberation of things,
songs, stories, a string of beads
some islander made in his equatorial days;
leaves, loaves, salad-making,
great roasts’ sizzling songs,
an unhurrying, yieldless time
of games, ghosts, gobs of things.
How when sentences finally came to be
he read Cappy Ricks and the Green Pea Pirates;
his eye on the page, my ear on his tongue.
Caesura was a bite of beer, a drink of cheese,
turning words like the roasts he made,
savory succulent tongue,
but page wordless now.
Now! Now!
Now Time strikes!
Hurricanes, lightning, days are crunching,
night is no more a pail of stars
flung as sand on dark skies.
The eyes are closed, the mouth;
when do songs cease to sound?
Sprung from his loins wanting to be,
self-torn from his arms
at some piece of boyhood,
I now remember earless, wordless,
the touch when I was lovely young,
and I know I roam forever
in the darkness of his eyes.
***
Tom
Sheehan has published 7 books in the last 6 years: mysteries,
poetry, memoirs, short story collections. They include Epic
Cures, short stories in 2005, from Press 53 in Winston-Salem,
NC; A Collection of Friends, memoirs, in 2004, from Pocol
Press in Clifton, VA; and This Rare Earth & Other Flights,
poetry, in 2003. He has six Pushcart nominations, a Martha Albrend
memoir nomination, a Silver Rose Award from ART for short story,
and many Internet appearances.
©
Tom Sheehan