Nancy Davies

My Father's Eyes
April, 2021

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My father’s eyes, a blue

expanse vast as his untold

failure: why not read the label,

I asked until one day he replied.

“I cannot read.”

Until then he never knew

the word dyslexic.

 

And when the blue began to vanish,

an ocean retreated from the shore

left in his face gray pools:

age as disability. I see my own

brown eyes fading now to blue

in ruptured depths where luck won’t

last: I won’t be my drivers license.

 

How boisterous are the birds crowding

trees like fans at a football game,

their abrupt silence when a

player gets brained. Disasters we witness 

shrink us in our chairs, close our

voices. The stretcher carries away

the load of silent flesh. Not me,

is what we always hope.

 

The fading eyes of a man whose

mother’s eyes were blue. They fade

like she did: too many babies. She

scolded each and every one,

those who read well and soon,

the one who never read. What I want

to say is that my father lives inside

me, lacking confidence, living

off his pride.

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