Old Man’s Beard

My father was a tetchy man. He knew.
It was his nature and he tried to quell
His irritable beast. He coped, not well,
But adequately, and his wives coped too,
Each in their different ways. My mother threw
The butter at him, and it rang the bell.
He thrust his temper back into its shell
And shut the fuck up. That was what to do.
His second wife, the wife he married for
His children, that one, she was not the same.
She could not answer back or slam a door.
She was a gentle soul, she could not do it.
Yet when she died he died. His life became
An empty, godless place with nothing to it.

He grew an old man’s beard like Santa Claus
And bought more books and studied Portuguese.
But sometimes he forgot what day it was
And sat in silence, frowning at his knees
As if there wasn’t any more to know,
Except the past, the past. I knew because
He told me, how he told me—so-and-so
And such-and-such and all so long ago.
His leg went bad, but he would not agree.
Let it alone. More morphine every night.
They thought, I thought, that he was better dead.
We thought he thought so too. Did we do right?
God knows. I don’t. And God has never said.
I hope my daughters do the same for me.