Daniel Holden Smith
August 6, 2025
Peternity
This, pastel pinstriped button up
It smells like you and Febreze.
Perched on your porch with our pups
I savor the view and I swallow the breeze
I turn to you dad, now shaped like trees
And I wonder, humbled & hollow
Were you afraid? Did you find peace?
What should I do?
Is anti-freeze the green one? Or Blue?
I’ve got all your gamepieces
but I don’t know the rules
***
Dad died last week
I need not say it in 3’s
My dad was weak,
And he cried.
And when he let his heart speak,
Warm tears melted the freeze.
And it looks like life lied to me
It seems death might be, ultimate ease
Dad can no longer hide from me
He is here, now, buzzing with the bees
***
How many of us feel
our lost ones in the world?
In flaunting flower petals now fully unfurled
In a dragonfly that just, around us, knowingly twirled
I see you, dad
In these sunny showers that sneak through
in the whispered wishes that speak true
I wonder, how many hear wind chimes and chime in,
“Dad, is that you?” – “Gram, ar-are you there?”
Do the widowed lay back their heads to the wind
and let lost loves tussle their hair?
***
Is death really so unfair?
That, for which we might never be prepared
We are so silently scared of it
Perhaps, from birth, God didn’t care one bit
And maybe this life is a curse
and through death, we are finally spared of it
***
“I’m so sorry for your loss” they say
Well, let me tell you what I’ve found!
My dad, he surrounds me now
He is the songbird’s wondrous sound
He is the grime and the grubs in the ground
He is the army of ants marching home to their mound.
He is this flurry of feelings felt
when my aching heart. Starts. to pound
***
What if, through life, we felt
our lost loves the whole way?
And cherished their presence
like children hand-brushing billboards
as they single file down hallways.
I will love you dad, always.
Wouldn’t that be nice!
If this Earth were a pizza pie,
We’d all have our very own slice!
“Don’t dare cut down this forest sir,
my sweet sister’s in there!”
“Mister! Don’t burn that, please!
My loves live in this air.
Imagine, 8 billion of us now alive
Another 100 billion through nature, revive
wave churning, song singing, oxygen secreting
flame burning, gong ringing,
RELISH in Love NOW,
because this part is fleeting
God, please let this heart keep bleeding.
Perhaps death holds the secrets
about ourselves and “the other”
Perhaps dying is the treatment
for the poison we are to Mother
If only crying in the street meant
“Help Me! Please!
I’m a starving soul, smothered”
but Instead we avert our eyes &
Their pain, we pretend to not know
JESUS MARY & JOe!!!
We’re all going to die!!!
So why have you let go??
Watching days and YEARS go by?!!?
Why!! why do you not let show
your malaise and your worst fears
their proud praises
and their jealous jeers
let fall brazen tears
Let them flow!! Let them go.
So that maybe my mind’s
maze may be cleared.
***