Father

by Bibhu Padhi (August 2015)

The mind likes to wander among

younger things. It hasn’t grown old

over thinking things thrown all over

time and space, like seeds.

Even today, it goes back so easily

through forty years only to locate

precisely the place where you left your body,

exposed to my eyes’ innocence and poverty,

the time that simply didn’t exist for me.

The sea falls through the night’s privacy,

into a pair of sleepless ears, reminding me

of how far I have come from you

to the midst of my children and wife.

The house is built with such care

is divided, almost falling into gossip

and a pain that has grown over the years

to take off its cement and bricks,

its once-fine, breezy interiors.

The mind, alert as ever, asks questions

through the sea’s early morning ebb and flow.

Father: why did you have to leave so early?

Why did you have a body and a name at all?

___________________________

Bibhu Padhi’s tenth book of poems, Midnight Diary, has just been published. He lives with his family in Bhubaneswar, India.

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