Father & Son

He said

“I live three miles from the ocean

but I haven’t been to the shore

in three years.”

I say, “That

sounds awful.”

                          “It’s easy

to forget the things

of beauty

that abound all around you.”

I nod in agreement,

furtively looking

at my watch, eager to get home,

hoping he won’t keep me

much longer.

                        “Look out of

my window.  Do you see that tree?

It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

Look how it stands, impervious

to everything we throw at it—

the city’s rot, the earth’s

malefactions.  Year after year it goes

through its cycles,

the constant rebirth, until

it outlives us, gently mocking us

with its silence.


“But I forget it.

I forget it unless forced

to consider it, as your presence

has forced me to consider it.

It’s a trapping, a mere

accessory, a bit of color

that doesn’t impact me

in any way that’s significant,

except on a day like this; and

even a day like this—talking here,

sipping coffee, getting along famously—

will soon fade, be of no

matter, ebb away into the 

wash of time.  And that’s the way

that beauty perishes: rarely through

willful destruction,

but through mere neglect.”


I left soon after,

for the day pressed on me—

many promises to keep,

many more people to please.

I, too, live near the ocean,

and haven’t been to the shore;

and I have a tree in my backyard,

tall and glowering,

insisting on its weight,

mocking me by its age, by its

permanence, refuting my claims

to property, to earth, to life.

The world conspires against you,

not out of malice,

but because, like God, 

it would say “I am what I am”.


Look at your watch; look,

and watch the hands fly.