Search Elsewhere

Because I do not know my father’s name,

I will not search for him in any records.

I will not run my fingers down a page

of Births and shout ‘Eureka!’ when I find

his name because I have no name to find.

The Register of Marriages will stay

unopened on its shelf. Page after page

of Deaths will not be touched by trembling hands.

I will not celebrate his birth. I will

not find his grave and leave fresh flowers there.

I will not pay my last respects or say

a silent graveside prayer. If here is where

I always am, then he will always be

elsewhere: beyond my reach; beyond my grasp.

Because I will not ever find my father,

instead, I search for traces he has left;

the traces which have skipped a generation;

the traces which have landed in my sons,

all five of them. One time, when they were growing up,

I lined them up like Russian dolls, and somehow,

a minor miracle, they stood still long

enough for Gem to take a photograph:

each one a different shade of someone else;

alike, and yet not so alike, the way

that families often are. They stand forever,

caught in that moment: one, two, three, four, five;

my father’s flesh and blood; my father’s grandsons.

Which one of them, I think, looks most like him?

My five beautiful boys, who say to me,

and always did: do not look back, look forward,

at us, the healers of your saddened heart.

Although you never knew your father’s love,

you know the same cannot be said of us.