My beloved father died this afternoon. He was conscious and loving and consciously loving until his last breath. I feel lucky to have known him, much less to be his daughter.
I will probably write about both his life and death more in the future. For today, I’ll settle for an older poem, a sonnet of sorts. It doesn’t really describe that much about him, just a habitual moment in our lives.
My Father
My father knelt beside my bed; his round head
reflecting the bedside lamp with the look
of lighting within. “And the genie,” he said,
“came out of a big blue jar.” Not from a book
were the stories he told me at night.
Always of genies who were big-blue-jarred
and did fairly little, only the slight
magic of minor wishes, often ill-starred.
But the stories were just a warm up to
our prayers. “Our Father,” those would start,
the words heading for hallowed, trespass too.
Interlocking like a spell he knew by heart,
they croakingly invoked a wished-for will
that the blue genied jar could never fulfill.
ManicDDaily 
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