Elegy to a Man I Never Met

Six-feet under you lie in wait for the time

when ten naked toes will dabble graciously upon your tomb—

the green façade you so carefully masquerade behind.

I know, father, that somewhere beneath your wooden time-box

there is a man that grew to love a woman that grew

pregnant with the precious daughters you never met.

I know, father, that someday you will come to understand

how much you could have meant to me.

As the pictures of your graduation and the letters you wrote

fall flat into my fingers I think of the person you were and

I wish that somehow your treasures from Finland would allow me

to inhale the small whispers that you crooned in my ear

when I escaped from mother’s womb.

Oh what words must have been said! What beautiful lullabies

must have reached the shell of my ear  like some kind of memorandum,

lullabies that will never reach the deep grave you have dug in my heart with your absence.


I'm so grateful for a father that stepped up and became a wonderful inspiration to me. Although I'll never replace the man I never met, I'm so fortunate to have the best dad in the world to look up to.