Thunderbolt

This poem was written the year my father turned 84. Our bodies are amazing examples of evolutionary design, and by the natural ends of our lives they will fail us.

At the high-ceilinged Afghan restaurant
Cutlery clinking, conversation clattering
Water glasses sweat in the Saturday heat
We’re dining on roasted cauliflower, on pomegranate-glazed eggplants
My father as usual can’t hear a damn thing
He eats slowly now,
But sits full elegant in his wine-dark Oxford shirt
and chestnut absent-minded professor cardigan
It has woven leather buttons

Long ago, he read to me at bedtime
The ten years’ trials of that wily voyager
Whose protectress always showed up
I loved Athena, wise daughter
Of a mighty father. From a mountainous armchair
He rained words down upon me
I never thought of his own decades

Now after years spent journeying to this place
In the restaurant it’s really time to go
The kids have left to feed the meter
Head down, my father chases Greek salad
across his plate
Fork failing him
He extends
his left forefinger,
and pushes diced cucumber
onto the tines.
Scylla of the public eye
Charybdis of hunger
Where to sail?

My father’s fork trembles against the china
He sets it down and gazes at us.
The body its own Trojan Horse
Foretold, inevitable
And all we have.
I should have said
On Olympus you can eat with your hands.