My father is dead. Again.

my father is dead. again.

(for my father-friend tom dent)

   1.
   i was thousands of miles away
   when tom's tree fell

   the weight of missing him
   answers the age old question

   because
   his aftershock's tremble

   reverberates within
   the chamber of my skull

   at all
   the oddest moments

   like discovering a special person
   within the skin of a child of mine

   and discerning at the same time
   a lady i used to love

   a lady whose love
   shaped me

   there are periods
   when our ability to perceive

   presence and potential
   is predicated

   on having been groomed
   by those who have gone before

   on having been shown
   how to see beyond

   what is now
   what is known, how

   to appreciate the shape
   of things to come

   all this prescience a product
   of learning the living wisdom

   some come from a brusque old man
   whose gruffness was so tender

   so touching
   in its honest intimacy

   as he suggested that
   there was something beyond

   what ever was
   and is, and yes, even will be

   there is always
   something more

   something better
   to be/come

   2.
   english words were never meant
   to adequately articulate
   the anguish in our mouths, our hearts
   when we lose the stretching part
   of our selves-the stairs we climb
   to see further, to descend deeper

   as we look out and over
   past the limits of horizon line

   our vision is improved when we stand
   on the shoulders of elders
   whose height hoists us higher
   than we could ever grow
   if we remained flat-footed
   married to the ground

   the view from these human
   balconies enables us to eye
   not just near and far
   but also back and down
   into the wells
   of our own personalities

   if we are fortunate
   we have fathers
   who help us
   clearly see
   depths
   as well as distances

   3.
   perhaps a moan
   is the most profound
   sound one can make
   when a father is gone

   when my first father died
   i cried publicly
   this death time my tears
   for tom are silent
   words on paper
   the two times
   a man is most
   alone
   are when

   he loses
   a father and when he
   loses his own
   life-his
   beginning his end

   4.
   in the new orleans
   that tom knew
   old griots die singing

   they do not go silently
   into some lonely night

   in his new orleans
   we do not kill our fathers
   to prove that we have arrived

   but rather we learn
   from them that we can
   crack open the kernel
   of our own becoming
   only by completing
   the final maneuver
   of life's ultimate passage rite

   the step of accepting the torch
   and making of ourselves a light

   volunteering
   to lift the father spirit
   to shoulder the responsibility
   of becoming beacon
   for those newly born
   and those yet to come

   in our new orleans we do not stop
   at simply burying aged bodies
   we also dance forward
   from funeral line
   and accept the awesome
   task of filling father shoes

   if i really come from
   a house of the rising sun,
   if i really believe
   in resurrection
   if i am really
   my father's son
   then i must be reborn

   be his life
   after life

   5
   In earth ways
   my father is dead. again.

   but yet again
   he lives

   the older i become
   the more people i contain

   another of my fathers
   is dead

   long live
   my father

   long live my father
   in me
   long live
   my many fathers

   long live
   long live

   all the fathers
   i am
   and all the fathers
   i will ever be

Kalamu ya Salaam is the founder and director of the Nommo Literary Society in New Orleans. He is the author of several books, including The Magic of Juju: An Appreciation of the Black Arts Movement (Third World P, 1998) and the anthology 360[degrees]: A Revolution of Black Poets (BlackWords, 2001).