The Good Father

This one is totally raw so bear with me. :) And yes, it has been a long damn time. Hopefully, not so long the next time. Thanks for looking and all the best!

I see a small girl,
hair in pigtails, dressed
in a pale pink pinafore,
playing with a doll.
She is kind even
to the pretend child
while she waits.

Father will be home
soon. He’ll kneel down
on his lawn where she
has already spread
the tea things, seated the bear,
the dolly even convinced
the sweet yellow dog
to mind his manners.
Father will kiss her
with pride and somehow
regret, still the wait
will have been
worth it to her

yet into her pensive
heart creeps a little shaft
of light like ice
that naughty brothers
slipped down her sundress,
that she learns to love
even the shock of cold
hard truth melting
illusions and clearing
away the tea things.

I feel this place and time
the heart would rather not
know the memories screened
in dreams every night.
Where even now amid broken
sidewalks and balding
shingles there is a genius
loci whispering from inside
those droughty rasping
hedges what was lost
in the leaving.

Ghostly thoughts
of good fathers close
round me lost in a gray
pinstriped army of them,
weary stooping slightly, minds
bound elsewhere obliged
while their remains languish
blindly indulging pretend cakes
and polite conversation

then daddy must leave,
bound by his sole
occupation building
a right kind of life
that never could be found
except at a little girl’s tea party.