Daily Diary, Day 866:
I have decided that this will be the last Sunday I will routinely publish one of my father’s poems. My primary reason for this is that, very frankly, most of the poems I haven’t published are a bit too, let us say, sensual, than I feel comfortable putting up in public. Not in bad taste, but perhaps not for a general readership (smile.) I will occasionally republish a poem if the topic feels appropriate to what is happening in my life. With these two poems, I will have published 40 in all, quite a respectable body of work.
The two poems below are among my favorites for rather obvious reasons. First, because they are so personal and second, because they deal so sensitively with the process of letting go. The first poem is addressed to my mother, Jane. Throughout her life, my mother battled with the effects of rheumatic heart disease. Yet, despite three open heart surgeries and frequent ill health, she was an extraordinarily dynamic woman who helped found the first hotline and shelter for domestic violence in Pittsburgh in the 1970s and became the executive director of Pennsylvania’s reform organization, Common Cause.
One of the reasons she was able to be so active in her life was the strength of her marriage to my father. She hated to be fussed over or have people worry about her health, and what my father provided her was the emotional and financial support so she could do what she wanted, despite the costs to her health.
Although she died fairly young, only in her mid-sixties, those of us who loved her, including my father, knew she was ready to lay down the burdens of a well-lived life, and so let her go with sadness but no regrets.
I assume my father wrote this first poem not too long after her death. However, the end hints that he had already met Ruth, who was to be his second wife. When he remarried, I was so pleased for him (and her because I knew what a wonderful husband he would be) and I know my mother would have been happy for him as well.
DEAR JANE
We part, and loneliness is born
one moment from love's touch.
From fire to ice. A corner turned.
The closing of a door.
Footsteps and time...then nothing.
Friends and strangers walk beside
And love, or tolerate.
They fall between our worlds.
They are not you.
Seeing and talking...and nothing.
Slow loneliness holds the power
Of love, but not it's place.
Mute hunks of thoughtless passing
Time...In blank. While
Tight springs of memory wind down.
A well remembered touch brings
rise of spirit hope.
The sister shade of deep despair
to last forever, darts.
And I am nothing.
I feel the grip of time, the enemy of love
And friend of loneliness.
Reason knows it's just for now
but cannot wait
For time itself to mend.
The evening cry of love believes it
has been heard, or felt.
And silent sleep that knows
tomorrow, waits. Then
Dreams of promised love slant
in through morning haze.
—Joseph Locke
This second poem is pretty self-explanatory. I was my parents’ only child, and they did an excellent job of letting me spin free without guilt when I reached adulthood. My father added on the last part to the initial poem after I married. Again, to me this is a beautiful poem of letting go.
I hope you have enjoyed my father’s poetry. If you ever want to revisit or read poems you’ve missed, do check out the My Father’s Poetry tab.
LOU
From your cradle years
until you were woman
we came at night to watch you sleep,
willed you waken
to remark our trespass.
In time lapse beauty
you grew before our eyes,
in cell dividing sequence,
in opening, expanding, transformations,
each one more receptive and complex,
while hard within
you formed a sharp
resolve to be away.
We are not the earth,
but you did moon within our holding force
for half your present life.
Without spark or noise
you built inertia to spin away.
Now,
you tumble free.
*****
you have come back from time to time
to share with us your lover
to stand with me by your mother's bed
while she got well
and to celebrate our present company
—Joseph Locke