My Father

My father sits at his kitchen chair.  This is where he smokes his pipe, lips passing over the black stem, puckered.  The door is open and he watches the shadows slide lazily across the small and cluttered room.  The air is thick with the scent of musk and the steam from the tea pot.  I am reminded of the first spiced taste of Darjeeling Tea, smooth and biting.  There was comfort in each sip as I swallowed my tears over the unfair hand life had dealt.  The warmth of it slid down my throat as my father sat and listened, smoking on his pipe with the rhythmic pa-pa-pah.  The pale blue smoke curled from his nose and lips and haloed around his head.  

I am at constant amazement of him, with his big hands that write delicate words.    The hard calloused exterior that softens with each smile, the skin folds at his eyes, which are as grey and as timeless as the sea.  They are closed and his mouth has softened, his breathing has slowed and he meditates on the color of the sunset.  His black hair has thinned, and white has sprouted around his ears and in the chin of his beard.  He has more lines than I remember.  And he is smaller.

Smaller, and now I can see his weaknesses.  The great stuffed owl; a hero and sometimes little more than an aging man.  He is mortal and broken.  Having found Persephone, he is still wanting.  All the ships have been burnt and the whiskey has gone down sour.  Does he weep or do tears hide in the dark corners of his soul? 

Still, there is the dawn.  There is the morning walk.  Crisp air hits his lungs as steam rises from the lake, from the tea pot, from the concrete in the heat of summer, lifting up the anger and hurt.  And there is comfort in solitary, and The Buddha, and Jesus…

There is satisfaction in the simplicity in coffee, eggs and bacon and his lover who takes her time in the morning to shower and dress every day.  He takes her to the train, or she drives, but she lets him alone all the same.  There is comfort in her too.