Halo
I have heard the Master say that on no occasion
does a man realize himself to the full,
though the mourning for a parent
may be an exception.
–Tseng Tzu
Fields the color of stale tobacco,
water barely breaching the dam.
Like anyone, I look forward and back,
though chiefly back these days.
I’m seeing myself at ten.
It’s years, however short they’ll have seemed,
before my father’s coronary.
It’s Sunday. The regular grownups–
parents, grandmother, bachelor uncle–
convene in the dooryard yew’s slim shade.
I’ve never returned to my father’s grave.
His shrine’s within my soul.
He exhales his Camel smoke,
which blends with the general August miasma.
No grasshoppers rattle. They hide from the heat.
No matter. I wouldn’t be tempted
to catch them to bait the pond’s small sunfish.
I need to stay, though I’m an outsider.
The murmur of voices blends
with the hum of the fan just inside on its sill.
Do I exist? I feel disembodied.
Stymied, I search for something to say,
to that notably big-hearted father mostly.
That’s not a halo he wears.
Of course not. It’s only that I dream one today,
and it’ll be part of that scene forever–
which, granted, was nothing unique,
and yet I tasted tears of confusion.
I taste them now. No doubt what I saw
was some commingling of smoke
and haze and the clouds that feathered the ridge.
Is that all I’m made of, just timeworn mourning?
I’ve outlived my father by decades,
always hoping, always vainly,
to say what’s always needed saying.
– in mem. Sydney L.W. Lea (1909-66)
*
Sydney Lea is a Pulitzer finalist in poetry, founder of New England Review, Vermont Poet Laureate (2011-15), and recipient of his state’s highest artistic distinction, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He has published two novels (most recently Now Look, 2024), eight volumes of personal essays (most recently, Such Dancing as We Can, 2024), a hybrid mock epic with former Vermont Cartoonist Laureate James Kochalka called Wormboy (2020), and sixteen poetry collections (most recently What Shines, 2023). His new and selected poems is due in early 2027.
