Making Things Right

For My Father

By, Barbara Bloom

Driving through the apple orchards
heavy with fruit,

I realize I have let the anniversary of your death
slip by-ten years already, or is it eleven?
It's a gray morning, and the clouds press down,
obscuring the sun.


I wonder if you knew

when you had to be helped on with your shoes

for the ride to the hospital

that you would never again
stroke your cat
or walk into your lab room
with its walls lined with antique instruments and books.



What I remember most from that time

is standing by your bed

as you grew smaller and smaller,
less and less of you

who had so frightened me as a child,
and looking down at you

lying there quietly

when it was too late to talk.

I just held your hand 

and told you I loved you.

I don't know what you heard 

or what you knew,
but those words were all that was left
that could matter
before you leapt off
from your bed

in that tiny white room
into something huge.