Father: Happy Birthday. Wish you were here.

My father was named after a famous general but he was never a man of war. He and my mother were missionaries until I came along. He died of diabetes-related problems when he was only 61. I was still young. Too young. Had only begun to get to know him. He was a romantic who wrote love poems to my mother up until the day he died. But this poem is for you, dad.

You would have liked this one as you loved the sea. You were a rare man. A man of honor; a man of his word above all else. You were loyal and true, kind, and brave. You stuck by your truth and yet owned up to your doubts. You lived in the present and yet never wavered in your optimism for the future. You believed in the goodness of humanity even in the face of staggering loss. You worked with your hands and still sang delighted. I have not met a man since that could fill those shoes.

Once more home is a strange place: by the ocean a
big house now, and the small houses are memories,
once live images, vacant
thoughts here, sinking and vanishing.

Rough sea now on the shore thundering brokenly
draws back stones with a roar out into quiet and
far depths, darkly to lie there
years, years — there not a sound from them.

New waves out of the night’s mist and obscurity
lunge up high on the beach, spending their energy,
each wave angrily dying,
all shapes endlessly altering,

yet out there in the depths nothing is modified.
Earthquakes won’t even move — no, nor the hurricane — 
one stone there, nor a glance of
sun’s light stir its identity.

Depths
by Richard Moore