What luck!
Got it for free
Never had to go out and find
That father of mine:
"Say", whatever your name is,
"I'm the little girl you walked out on.
Some thirty years it's been now."
No.
He just swung right into
That hospital room
Visiting, we were,
A mutual and ailing relation.
Held on to my chair, I did
And said:
"Steady now."

The shock of his aging
Hit me first.
It didn't help that
Jowls
Hung
Under
Three days stubble.
Eyes, badly focused
Crusted with clear, thin, ice.
Tobacco had done its job
On those two front teeth
Or was their color due 
To simple decay?
There was
Fat
Bulging
Beneath a cowboy shirt
But the tweed jacket
And the plaid fedora
Had the look of a man
Who knows a good cut
When he sees one
That jaunty hat
Shielding so well
A vanity about baldness
I remembered from
Another life.

"Well", he said
Timorous
The eyes had always rimmed red so easily
"It's all come to me too late."
Knowing now I had the upper hand
I rallied:
"Think of those it never comes to at all."
Added, still enjoying the sport:
"Is it clean money at least?"
Money is money!
Only against the law if you get caught!
A sickness if you lose!
Be a winner and you'll live forever!
This, his answer,
Refrains again,
From my past.

"Oh!  I have a friend," I offer,
He deals in dope
Pimping,
Perhaps you know each other..."
Reverting to another pattern
Moralizing to my no good old man
He shakes his head
As if to say:
"I never could win with you."
With my Mother either
I wanted to yell
But finally did say
Out loud
How hard it must have been
To fight her perfection
How hard to be rescued
From her strength.

So
From this
I got him to talk
About his five wives
Always with the jokes
He tells me next time
He'll have to be listed
In the yellow pages.
Not under "fathers"
Someone says in my head
But I want
More than anything
For him to be proud of me
So I say nothing
Then I go about
Verifying some facts:
"You did give me a set of golf clubs
When I was born?"
Not saying:
"That meant you loved me
Or at least had some hopes."

There we stood
Like two lovers
Trying to talk
Over the din
Of a dying woman
Whose hand I'd forgotten
I was clutching.
Could it be on this
Her death bed,
That she recovered herself
In the presence of father and child
Enough to see
Enough to hear
My slightest murmur of a reply when he
Finally asked:
"Could we have lunch sometime?
Not even God would have to know."
"It's a possibility,
I'll think it over."
"Anything is a possibility in this life..."
Says my hardened old aunt
And she relaxes at last
Back to the pillows
Against which she's been straining
To hear
This song.