Travelling with My Father

1. Berlin, 12 April 1995

For our first time abroad
we decided to see Germany—
that which had been separated,
was rejoined.

We travelled the pathways of tourism,
saw this and that, bought our postcards—
you with your camera,
me with my books.
 

Around us, heavy cranes launched themselves
into the sky while a construction horn
consecrated the offering of metal and concrete.
The Wall was down. The world had changed.
The city was a cathedral of humming noise.
 

We searched for evidence of the Wall,
moved silently, quickly, as focused men do.
Across an open field, part of it goosestepped
lamely away from a troubled past.
We touched it together and you strolled away,
leaving me to my cigarette and
the poisonous ghosts of history.

You were on the other side of the wall
when you called my name. Rusted rebar
framed you and we stood there,
father and son,
looking at each other through the broken wall,
understanding glimpses
of eternity.
 

2. Dublin, 16 June 1997

Two years later we started in Belfast, at the Peace Line,
that wall which separates Catholics from Protestants.
The sun was asleep when we rode the swaying train to Dublin,
you with your camera, me with my bruised copy of Ulysses.
We were going to walk literature’s Mecca—
it was my idea, but you, the polymer chemist,
seemed happy to contemplate the bonds between us.
 

On that Bloomsday, we bought our lemon soap,
visited Martello Tower, and walked along Sandymount Strand.
I, the writer, your son, explained how Stephen Dedalus
never connected with his fatherfigure.
 

It was over burgundy and gorgonzola sandwiches
that I showed you a map of Dublin.
I traced my finger over the wandering rocks of
missed opportunities between Joyce’s characters.
 

When I finished speaking
you ordered two pints of Guinness.
We drank silently, together,
until the darkness had been captured deep within us.
 

You licked foam from your lips,
scratched the raw stubble on your satisfied face,
and you sat back, smiling from the street, to me.
 

When we crawled back to Belfast
our mouths were weak but our memories
were as alert as the first day
that you cradled me,
and wondered who I was.
 

3. Lake Superior, Fall 1999

The suburban cobwebbing of Minneapolis
was a memory as we sat on the cabin porch.
Pine trees supported the darkening sky, and a pink sun
dissolved hotly into the freshwater ocean.
 

Disused board games lounged between us,
crushed beer cans were scattered near the trash.
 

Dusk tightened. I listened to your breathing—
regular as waves against the Minnesota shoreline.
 

“Dad?” I called softly.

No answer, you were asleep, testing oblivion.
 

With the cold woods whispering around me,
I felt your absence and knew that someday
you would be stolen from me. I thought about—

                            just as you must have done when
                           your own father travelled on ahead—

a world empty of your quiet support.
 

I considered my future self
sitting next to a stranger,
one that I had raised from birth.
That child, linked to the foggy roads of your past,
might one day call out into the dark,
 

Dad?
 

But I too will have travelled on ahead.
 

                                                        Patrick Hicks