My Father and Pavarotti

On my stereo this morning,
just as I lean in to write, Pavarotti
came on, his aria filling the whole room.
I’m not schooled enough to know
which aria, only how my father loved him
and how, leaving his crabbiness aside, my father
would sit watching the Lake Michigan surf
from his living room window while the great man sang
over the speakers that filled the house;
and on the patio of his Southern winter home,
he listened, while the lapis surface of the pool sparkled;
then in the last years of the rehab home where he lived
with his rescued brain, a small carved canyon still visible
where the surgeon had rushed in. Once a week I drove
the eighty miles to sit with him there, his silver hair
still blazing, his eyes closed as we absorbed the pure notes
of the rich tenor who sang to my father still.

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This poem is forthcoming in Andrea’s collection Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press, fall, 2022).

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Andrea Potos is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Marrow of Summer (Kelsay Books) and Mothershell (Kelsay Books). A new collection entitled Her Joy Becomes is due out from Fernwood Press in the fall of 2022. She has poems forthcoming in The Sun Magazine, Poetry East, Spiritus Journal, and The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy (Storey Publishing, April 2022).