David Mason poem: Fathers and Sons

  

Fathers and Sons

  

Some things, they say,

one should not write about. I tried

to help my father comprehend

the toilet, how one needs

to undo one’s belt, to slide

one’s trousers down and sit,

but he stubbornly stood

and would not bend his knees.

I tried again

to bend him toward the seat,

and then I laughed

at the absurdity. Fathers and sons.

How he had wiped my bottom

half a century ago, and how

I would repay the favor

if only he would sit.

                           Don’t you—

he gripped me, trembling, searching for my eyes.

Don’t you—but the word

was lost to him. Somewhere

a man of dignity would not be laughed at.

He could not see

it was only the crazy dance

that made me laugh,

trying to make him sit

when he wanted to stand.

                           -David Mason

           from DM's Sea Salt: Poems of a Decade, 

         2004-2014 (Red Hen Press 2014, used by permission)