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With the Koi
For My Father
by Martina Reisz Newberry
In the long afternoons
I sometimes dream of you, Dad,
so tall—a child's lie—rattling
the pages of your newspaper.
Your glasses glint, your eyes
strain white, then I wake.
You did not know, that morning,
how the students were cleaning
the Koi pond and found
at the bottom what looked like
a human hand. They walked down
with buckets and brushes
and fine clean intentions to drain
the Koi pond and scrub its sides.
That's when they found it; just after
the pond was drained, the Koi afraid.
In the evening, the nurse called
to say, "Hurry, your father
is dying." And I began
to move like Esther Williams
in a water ballet, like
a Piscean ballerina—
selfish and keen and beautiful
in my reluctance. One student
laughed; another, they say
vomited, but the one
who fished it out,
a tiny Vietnamese girl
studying Civil Engineering,
only pursed her lips and sniffed
and suggested they get on with it.
I'm grateful, Dad, that you were not Catholic;
had a priest been there, I swear,
I would have cried to offer him
the usual thing. Instead,
I touched your dry hand, stood
a while to harbor. . .something
for your emptied self.
From her book: NOT UNTRUE AND NOT UNKIND (Arabesques Press, 2007) available from amazon.com
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