I look at this photo,

the face of my father,

at once familiar

suddenly a stranger.

He appears both confident

and distant,

a touch resistant,

and his eyes are oddly vacant.

I can’t read them.

And yet shouldn’t they, 

if windows to the soul, 

reveal so much more?

Those hazel green eyes

betrayed by lies

that diseased his integrity,

all for the price

of professional development

and personal abandonment.

Is that enough?

Does that suffice?

His authenticity, 

though seeking simplicity, 

is fraught with complexity.

His marriage, his wife, thirty years

questioned, doubted, and though the tears

reveal vulnerability, shock, fragility and more,

the lack of desire to seek and explore

what had happened; the when and the why, 

is the greatest tragedy,

the greatest cry.

I look at this photo, his face, my father

there’s kindness, there’s loss and there’s memory of other;

of the woman he left

utterly bereft

whom stands upon the tattered threads;

the foundational rug she believed stronger

than the alluring tug 

of “new”.

And what can she do?