Costello's

This is an undated poem I wrote about my dad back when he was living by himself, before assisted living and the Alzheimer units.  Looking back at my journals and the poems I printed on word processors and various computers over the years I notice a marked lack of consistent dating or dating at all.  But this had to have been during the brief heyday in JP of the Costello's Blues Jam, which would have made it somewhere between 1999 and 2000.  I wrote this the day after my dad and sister came along one Thursday night.  I had thought of reading this at Chuck's funeral last year but decided that, as true as it may be, it only tells part of my dad's story.


Costello's

We dance to these blues on Thursday nights
but Chuck says his awkward goodbyes beforehand
trying to see the other side of the moon.

He is uncomfortable in greeting his daughter;
and I and all we men 
seek comfort in dreams, imagination, and fantasy.
We fail to see the world as it is;
so we sing these songs
that have already been written for us.

We stand with sticks and axes in hand,
waiting to become ourselves
on someone else's time.

And as the hours grow,
these failings of our fathers and ourselves
become the moment's muse,
filling these songs with a familial familiarity.