Today is Father’s Day and I am thinking of my own father who died at the age of 89 shortly after moving to Massachusetts from California to be close to me and Marianne. The three of us had spent precious time together in California helping my father prepare for that move. That time was a gift, enabling a bond to develop between Marianne and my father, and Marianne was so supportive of me after my father’s passing.
Now Marianne has left the physical plane and I ponder the koan of my life, as I wrote in “We Are Not Alone“:
Why am I here when my loved one is gone?
Why must my mind find the answer?
Why cannot I be like the patient trees?
And why is there such sorrow in the world?
Many years before, when my mother and my father and Marianne were all living, I wrote a short poem touching on the same question. I shared it with my father, and I know it touched him. He told me that at a meeting of his Congressional representative he felt a call to recite my poem, but realized it wouldn’t be appropriate to share in that setting. But it felt right for me to share it with you today.
Pseudo Man A pseudo song By a pseudo man An echo is what I am I seek to serve But I have not yet begun to scan The inhumanity of man to man.