Dad, I Miss You

The pine trees are swaying like they used to do

When the world was as simple as a buck and a view

You taught me to track where the moss meets the stone

And told me a man never walks truly alone

I still see your hands on the handle of the axe

Leaving a trail of the heavy wood stacks

We’d sit by the embers as the embers turned grey

And talk about things we’d get done the next day.

I can still feel the spray of the lake on my face

Watching the line as it moved through the space

Between the boat and the bank where the big ones would hide

I was ten years old with the world on my side

You were building a life with a hammer and nail

While teaching me how not to fear when I fail

Every joint that we set, every board that we laid

Was a piece of a foundation that’ll never quite fade.

Then the world tilted over in the blink of an eye

No time for a prayer or a proper goodbye

At forty-eight years, you were just in your prime

But a leak in the brain took the rest of our time

I was nineteen and standing on the edge of the dark

While the fire went out from the very first spark

Now there’s a hole in the house that we started to build

And a space in the woods that can never be filled.

I missed you at twenty when I didn’t know the way

I missed you last Tuesday on a quiet spring day

I wanted to ask how to fix up the sink

Or sit on the porch for a slow, steady drink

I missed the advice on the girl I should marry

And the weight of the burdens I’m trying to carry

There are memories unwritten and stories untold

In the years that you never got the chance to grow old.

I go to the woods when the pressure gets high

And look for your ghost in the gray of the sky

I’m building the things that we talked about then

But I’m doing the work of two separate men

I’ll teach my own son how to cast out the line

And tell him the heart of his grandpa was mine

Though the hemorrhage took you before we were through

I’m spending my life being a memory of you.