My father has become an old Aegean King
peering out anxiously,
scanning the horizon full of foreboding.
So I phone him before I leave
to say I’m on my way.
I use light words, ‘coming soon’,
‘around that time’, promising words
that hover and play, allow him
to drift in and out of sleep
while he waits,
the way he did on the lake front
that year, filling whole mornings
just sitting, watching
for the small island ferry.
He’d listen to the early wash of pebbles
the bakery opening,
the few passengers beginning to assemble.
The lake was so still, so flat
he could follow the ferry’s whole journey –
see it set off from the far shore,
its flourishes in and out of tiny bays.
And wake to its arrival.
