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ON MY FATHER'S BLINDNESS
by Tom Sheehan
copyright © 2001



Ludlow Press Poetry

On My Father’s Blindness

Time whispered when he had eyes,

a deliberation of things,

songs, stories, a string of beads

some islander made in his equatorial days;

leaves, loaves, salad-making,

great roasts’ sizzling songs,

an unhurrying, yieldless time

of games, ghosts, gobs of things.

How when sentences finally came to be

he read Cappy Ricks and the Green Pea Pirates.

His eye on the page, my ear on his tongue,

caesura was a bite of beer, a drink of cheese,

turning words like the roasts he made,

savory succulent tongue,

but page wordless now.

Now! Now!

Now Time strikes!

Hurricanes, lightning, days are crunching,

night is no more a pail of stars

flung as sand on dark skies.

The eyes are closed, the mouth;

when do songs cease to sound?

Sprung from his loins wanting to be,

self-torn from his arms

at some piece of boyhood,

I now remember earless, wordless,

the touch when I was lovely young,

and I know I roam forever

in the darkness of his eyes.

Tom 's work has appeared in The Paumanok Review, New Works Review, Three Candles, among others. A novel, "Vigilantes East," is under contract; another novel, "An Accountable Death," is to be serialized on the Internet; and a short story/memoir collection, "A Collection of Friends," is currently being reviewed by a publisher, with 15 of the entries currently published. Co-editor of the sold-out 2000-copy issue of "A Gathering of Memories, Saugus 1900-2000," a 482-page look at his hometown of Saugus, MA, now in its second printing. 
Email: tomsheehan@mediaone.net