both

how wrong the aloneness of my Father’s body, slumped in the reverberant too-small bath.
and Mother, cupping His head, mapped with violent-violet scans, explorations of hope, reduced,
a crown of purple thorns, a porcelain throne, draped in linen terrycloth.
damn God!
he’s unskinned, out of his shell of Fatherness, adrift, washed into the sea, unnautilized!
abandonment!
our twin-sized corpse, the empty echoing manor.
a beauteous form, intelligent in pattern and methods of formation, now a specter.
a lesson never to be imparted to a son.
a soft soul, gentleness, virtuous repose, nesting within the cavity of Fatherness, of Husbandness.
I shall never see the body again.
the pine box must now do.
for him, my lost Father, my exposed Father, my unspoken love.
I feel more and more a growing geometrical structure around and within me,
a place of origin, a place of departure, a place.
not a ribbed trap,
but rather a boat,
to skim a small life,
towards a woman, a Wife.

About the Author:

Jeffrey S. Hartnett is a retired professor of architecture from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. After earning degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of Texas at Austin, he taught at various universities, from coast to coast, including for two years in China. He lives in Portland, Oregon.