My Father Gets Up in the Middle of the Night to Watch an Old Movie
On cable television. Because he can't sleep.
My father gets up in the middle of the night
to watch an old movie on cable television—
because he can't sleep. He has done this before.
He will do it again, and sometimes he eats
cookies. My father eating cookies and watching
an old movie again because he can't sleep.
He is eighty-seven years old. He lives alone.
Because my mother died ... and sometimes he looks
at her absence on the black sofa. My father
turning back to the movie on cable television,
eating another cookie. The movie has a name,
but he doesn't know it. My mother died—
because this is not a movie with a happy
ending. Or any ending. My father returns
to bed and goes to sleep. Or does not,
and then later sleeps. The television reflects
the lamp he leaves on ... the black sofa.
Reflects an old mirror behind the sofa—
-Dennis Trudell
today is my father's birthday.
which means everything/nothing to me.
it is also oscar wilde's birthday. i am struck by the irony that i am more familiar with the life, times and writings of this other tall, broad-shouldered, larger-than-life irishman than i am with the person of william mcconnell, who died one morning in our front garden when i was three and a half.
so here i am. october 2006. facing my broad shoulders to the world. starting these studies near walls he walked by. he's around i guess. from him, this frame, a wedding ring, an old guitar and this entanglement in the mess and mesh of irish politics. the passion and the pain.
i have a poem about him i was going to post on here. but it is too sad for today. a birthday should be a celebration of life, not death. but these are inextricably entwined. these brute facts are twisted together and the knots won't come undone. i wish i had known him. i hope he knew me.
because my father died, sometimes i look at his absence
in the lines on my face
in the dust on an eko fretboard
in the queen's courtyard
in the everywhere, the everything.
today is my father's birthday.
which means everything to me.
