April 3, 2018

what has survived you
for my father, David Stein (June 19, 1947-April 4, 2017)

Certain recipes - crepes, roast chicken, a particular salad dressing best suited
for summer - and there is a copper-hued dish that still carries the stains of a tagine
we shared two years ago. The musical you directed the spring I turned 15,
burned on videocassette and featuring a song that, a few bars in, convinces
a good cry out of me 30 years on. I have your feet, your long fingers, the look
you used to give in photographs that made it seem you weren't wholly in the frame.
Your garden, a fraction of which was transplanted a few villages over to a good friend.
She's been tending it since and used the word "prosperous" to describe the blooms.
I was writing in my notebook the day you died, and thousands of words have since trailed
that departure, each seasoned by a vicious tenderness that refuses to let go.