Thankfully my father remains in good health. But each year life herself diminishes us both a little more and each year I find an old poem once learned in school becoming more and more true.
Memory of My Father
Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.
Stumble on the kerb was one,
That man I saw in Gardiner Street
He stared at me half-eyed,
Faltering over his fiddle
I might have been his son.
In Bayswater, London.
And I remember the musician
Seems to say to me
He too set me the riddle.
Every old man I see
In October-coloured weather
"I was once your father."
-Patrick Kavanagh