My Father's Letters - Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

My Father's Letters

Every day my father writes
His life into being. He plants
Razor wire around the perimeter
Of his mind to keep out
The fog that steals the present,
Mines the paths of his memory.

He composes tiny tasks
To define the boundaries
Of his days and lives
In a country shrunken
By the success of survival.

Routine and ritual hold him
As they always have, as a mother
Holds her child, assures him
Of the moment's permanence,
The presence of only now.

Bound by a body less
And less, he walks
The borders of his dwindling 
Spheres and touches the stillness
Of the Unknown to come.


	- Rebecca del Rio