Leah

Fathers never imagine cradles      
rooting as crypts;          
wooden limbs returning        
as conduits through dirt
to rock in the bough       
         
Worn monument of teddy bear          
its fur skeletal from handling;        
last button-eye dangling        
its all-seeing childhood gone          
         
A vast nothingness reverberates        
through an empty chest;          
her stripped Hospice mattress          
rested on a ribbed mindset:          
         
What if, what if, what if        
it was me instead. . .          
         
Despite distance, that strange          
space of stretched minutes          
her voice was always within reach        
as long as she was breathing;        
         
in a physical sense --        
         
Leah; closer than the moment        
you released her into existence        
from a double-helixed DNA          
to form her own carbon footstep:        
         
An extension of Created Being          
over someone who never lived        
to drink music and memories           
from the streets of New York          
         
Grateful for the experience, she is        
and considered you a God, Dad        
       
Can you feel her presence       
replacing that nothingness
over what might never have been       
         
~