The Man I See by Robert Darken

I never knew how a life can burn down
like a slow candle, the way my father is and is not
the face at his end of a weekly video call
initiated by a nurse’s aide,
positioned badly in the frame: one eye, silver rim
of eyeglass, bridge of a nose patched long ago
after a carcinoma, thick lips, some teeth,
a missing upper bridge.

Sparse whiskers glint against a sagging throat.
Where do you live now? he asks me,
and I tell him: still Connecticut.
Still a thousand miles from him in Sister Bay.
Is that anywhere near you, Rudy? he asks
the image of my brother in another window.
Rudy is still in California, so no, not close.

At my age it’s still no trouble to conjure a memory
of my father singing O My Darling, Clementine,
as he sits in a lawn chair before a fire
on a family trip to Colorado, or see him
bend the driver’s seat all the way forward
so his three boys can scramble into the back
of the green Ford Maverick during that era
when he drove us to the Field Museum
practically every Saturday. I see him
in a plaid coat and a laughably small blue beanie
stop for a breather in the midst of shoveling snow,
both hands resting atop the wooden shaft.
Was that the same man?
Every moment was a moment that he was becoming
the man I see now on screen.

What do you hear about Helmer? he asks
about his brother, dead more than twenty years.
His hair stands in stalks
like wisps of white smoke
reminding me suddenly of a young Lindbergh
on the tarmac, tousled by an Atlantic wind,
about to pass into the fog and out of sight.



Originally from the Midwest, Robert Darken now resides in Connecticut, where he teaches high-school English. His poems have appeared in One Art, The Orchards, and New Verse News.