Something Of A Remembrance

Decades have made him something of a myth

To a girl who preserved her youth in antique pottery

Kept on high shelves in a dark springhouse

Patiently waiting for the archaeologist's hand

And it’s made him something of a miracle

To a woman who found peace through his enduring existence

In the infinitely nested Russian dolls

Carved from a family tree in constant regeneration  

And it’s made him something of a ghost

In the vacant space between sleep and awake

That he occupies by sitting a spell at his daughter’s bedside

Tucking her in with the permanence of five o’clock stubble on her ever aging cheek

And it’s made him something of a dream

When she’s able to lose all spatial reasoning of time and existence

In a crayon colored realm that allows her to forever be a simple child

And he to simply be her Daddy

E.A. O'Connell