after Seamus Heaney

My father sits up on the hospital bed, hair fuzzy,

cheeks rosy; he is smaller than when I last saw him.

He leans on his walking frame to push himself up

with spindly arms. „I need to do it on my own.“

In the black and white photograph two brothers

sit both sides of their mother, flaxen heads tilted

towards her, framing her placid face. Leather pants,

hair cropped and accurate; this is 1940s Germany.

In this family picture not even the shadow of a father

stands behind you, no hand on your mother’s shoulder,

none on yours. He had stowed his long shadow

in his army knapsack; leather straps cut into flesh.

At night, on Crete, he wrapped it around himself

like a  foggy blanket, trying to hide from partisans

in creeks. – When the war was over, he came back

a shadow, and shadows don’t speak.

Have you, dad, ever let your head tilt further, fall heavy

on your mother’s shoulder? You found other things

to lean on: spade and shovel, pitchfork; other things

that earth you: heavy baskets, wheelbarrows, buckets,

filled with what you dug up: potatoes, turnips;

and the steaming milk from brown-eyed cows

you leaned your head on, pressed your shoulder to.

I dreamed I was a tree, askew, one thick root

drilled into the earth, others aerials; against all

judgement I could sit on them.