To My Father, Who Has Stepped Out

Now, you can rest.

Having sloughed off the rack of aching bones,
You can simply be,
In that way that flash bulbs
Hover and dance on the cornea,
Though long since 
Brittle and burnt.

Your presence, always stolid,
Has become an insistent absence,
And we, your children, have become
Sieves,
Weaving through the liquid world,
Catching atoms of you
Borne on the current of loss.

Memory being what it is,
You begin now to appear in fine form,
Jaunty
Optimistic
But always a shade removed
From the moment,
A part of you hanging back
With those
Who,
Like you now,

Had moved beyond the scrim
Of certain presence,
And dissolved,
At last,
Into the
Stream of
All
Being.
--Mr. Gobley