He was standing at the end of my bed

on my left side in that tan shirt, brown 

pants, brown belt and shoes.  With that 

grin reassuring and unnerving.

“Dad?”  He’d been dead 32 years and I 

was in a hospital.  A disturbing 

surprise; he didn’t say anything and 

disappeared.  And I was thinking of 

conclusions of a thousand choices I 

didn’t know I had made and how they now

presented themselves as inevitable.

The way I was of him, my children of me,

the stories I told, how the past had come 

to here and now and how the future 

would come out of every here and now

and how all I wanted was to get well 

enough to leave but not before my time

thinking how time and eternity like

a double-entendre and how careful

I should be in choosing what I say

and do and looked again to make sure

Dad had left alone.