What are we going to do about the years, Daddy?

What are we going to do about the years, Daddy?

What are we going to do about the years, Daddy?

What are we going to do about the papers?

What are we going to do with the lists and the boxes,

the disappeared datebooks,

the days of your hard-driving, hard-driven hours?

What are we going to do, Daddy,

with the nights of chocolate and mistletoe, guestbooks full of

European guests learning to drink water at your table?

What if I put you into a poem, folded

the lankiness, the King Kong act, the seal bark,

those high-waisted red jeans and Bessie the sideways cello

into words on a page titled Daddy in a poem

and what would you say?

Oh throw it out, throw it out, aren't those just the

gee-whiz, what-a-guy, ain't-he-a-character

pieces?

(You were documenting,

documenting, all those years, ink

on the lines, lines

on the page, pages

in the datebook, and datebook

onto the shelf full of datebooks

but now, now that my house is groaning

with the boxes of your years,

boy and man and son and grandson,

the datebooks have disappeared.)

What are we going to do about the years, Daddy,

and all the papers? Am I supposed to tie

a bow around it, wrap you up?

The photographs, the things you said,

the things I've heard, the things I've read.

What about the freckle-faced earnest boy

and the paranoid man, what about

the papers and lists and notecards, Daddy,

the boxes of notecards, 3 x 5, backing up

everything?

What about those ten hard best-spent years,

the plain bare rooms you filled

with cards

filled with verses

you and Mr. Makwala,

you and Mr. Mwanga, Mr. Maleme,

you and the verses,

the Greek, the French, the Kituba,

the hours

the chairs, the typewriters,

the years spent getting ready

all the ways you reinvented yourself afterwards?

What are we going to do about the years?

What are we going to do about the papers?