A Reflection

I remember my father sitting by the window,

Back stiff against the wood spindle-back chair.

His plaid woolen shirt, long faded by the sun,

Now thread bare from mom's attentive washing.

His metal frame glasses perched easily at the end

Of his nose, while a five o'clock shadow swathed a stern

And aging face ready to smile with bemused interest.

He was lost in another Abe Lincoln biography, a fabled

Life absorbing all his attention,the heavy tome in his lap.

It really didn't matter that he was alone, my father WAS

Those "Four Score And Seven Years Ago", those fabled

Words a foundation of our country, the Lincoln  legacy.

He would sit there quietly, absorbing monents in the past,

It never ocurred to him that it could never last.

Even "Honest Abe" understood history's great value

Is tody's path to the future, but my father just never knew.

Minutes would turn to hours, natures light giving way to

The antique hurricane lamp, positioned "just so."

I have often wondered if that would be me some day,

A life on the wane, alone, with so little to say.