Phrenology

"Hey daddy, do you have a picture of just you in a frame?
So I can remember you when you die."

The memory of you, silhouette against the lake, pensive and staring out
into reflections and ripples, casting a net of thought,
almost indistinguishable from the pillars of the dock
is more a likeness of you than any mantle mounted memory.

A man just beyond touch but within whisper,
still and quiet, antique.
A monument to time.
The time of your father, and “that father lost,
Lost his.”

The time of your war stories that thrilled my childhood.
The time of conduct and courage herculean like some Greek myth
Of accomplishment and stature I have tried to reach.
But even now as a father matching an age I remember you,
I am childish and small.
With unmanly grief, contemplating the plebeian reflection I see in the mirror
And the risible smile my daughter now speaks of framing to remember me.

The last time I saw you, you were standing,
arms linked in natural parade rest,
looking over the stele of Tomochichi.
A rock, solid and unmovable as a man half idea and half vision,
dark skinned and taciturn, large and formidable, granite, stone, timeless.
Your face, chiseled angular, native in its own right,
darkened by sun,
more defined and skull like than in my childhood.
Mortality poking through the skin
of your bald irradiated head.

When you started to lose your hair,
you asked me to shave it off in the garage.
You, who had always had black hair, full hair,
youthful vibrance that refused to age
and wilt away, being shaved down to the skin,
made flesh, in a folding chair.

You told me of shaving your father in a hospital bed and keeping the razor,
but the story ended there,
With no direction to that razor,
Or what to do with the one in my hand.

Much of everything we shared is such.
I have outlines, a shape, a silhouette, bones.
And I am left to fill in the forms and details
with my own solitary thoughts and refracting reflections in the water
Alone on a dock with
Colors and shades not yours.
But I suppose we both assumed
close enough to construct an image.