waiting for my father
to find words that never come
about a dream
the empty bird feeder swinging
in the manic March wind

The mind doesn't just go all at once the doctor explained; it comes and goes, up and down, he said making a wavy line with his finger in mid air. After spending the whole day with my father, I thought he was off to bed, when he turned around, came back to his chair without his walker, sat down and asked, "tell me, what do I do when I have a dream?" A dream? Do you mean a bad dream? "Like the other night," he started to explain, "I had this dream . . ." and that was all he could say. For 10 minutes or so, I watched him struggle to tell me about this phantom dream that he was asking me to help him with, but I couldn't help him, except to say, "we all have crazy dreams now and again, Papa, but they're only dreams." I could see it come to him a few times, then disappear quicker than he could get the words off his lips, and the frustration was unbearable. Here was my father, the man who had protected me my entire life, the man who I went to when I had a bad dream, looking to me to help him. I sent him off to bed, helpless, hoping he could forget about it and find peace, then came upstairs to pour a glass of wine and cry. Some times this is the only thing to do.