My Father is Not Dead

My Father is Not Dead

My father is not dead. Just yesterday,

 at the shopping centre, he walked

along an arcade in my direction,

 with his round body and white hair

and the usual quizzical expression

 behind his spectacles; I baulked

and hesitated before finding there,

     straight ahead, leading away,

no arcade but a floor-to-ceiling

 mirror. That old man before me

was my reflection; and yet my father

 is not dead. His voice, with its edge

of subtle irony, comes back whether

 or not an effort of memory

summons it. With the force of knowledge

     comes the feeling

that my father is not dead. In my head

 I hear each favourite phrase,

“That’s not very sensible”, or “How right

 I always am”; say them aloud,

And the known words emerge into the light,

 “Very nourishing”, when the food

on the table is somewhat wanting in taste—

     my father is not dead,

his character may have long since parted

 ways with his cremated body,

but it lives on in mine. The dead survive

 inside each of us, in the form

of genes, and in souvenirs that the live

 preserve; one only has to see

the grimace in that mirror to confirm

     my father is not dead.

Jamie Grant