Father’s Day

Your song sang in my mind today.

I longed so to sing it with you.

It was one of your sillier songs,

and it rolled round and round,

like that toy train you bought for me

once, when I was five or six.

It was more than you could afford

and I soon disposed of it, as a child does.

I see you still, on that morning

you first walked with me to school.

New York City so slyly proud of

Autumn, it cackled in the painted trees. 

We sang together then and loud

and made a spectacle of us, you’d say,

like Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments,

screened in Technicolor at our theatre

by the elevated train. We made so little

 from it dad—I have  just the memory.

My cousins, my children paraded to your

songs.  I suppose they sing them still.

But time sings in…