For My Grandfather...
Early mornings and the smell of burning coal. Winter's cold hand dancing just a few feet in front of my face, occasionally darting forward to touch the tip of my nose or slap life into my cheeks. Every forgotten word is a glorious pattern of warm breath into freezing air, rising into a sky coloured the perfect blue of memory.
You took me walking almost every day. But it's the winter mornings I remember. They were ours and ours alone. We'd wrap ourselves in coats and scarves and set out to challenge the cold once again; your slow, easy stride making a mockery of my tripping, stumbling run. In a world that forced me to grow up so fast, you were always able to make me feel like the child I ached to be. Even now, I smile to think of your ponderous grace.
You were a mapmaker to me. God's own cartographer. You seemed to know a thousand different routes to a thousand different places. You exist in a soft-focus, storybook part of my mind, where every journey was a new adventure and we never visited the same place twice.
The words are gone now. I can't bring back those stories you'd tell me. They're lost in that soundless place between the cadence of your accent and the ceaseless rhythm of your feet.
The words, but not the meaning. The meaning is in every frozen morning that takes me out of this darkened room and onto the streets of my past, in the shock of a body resuscitated by the cleansing gasps of winter, in the scent of every chimney breathing warmth into that forever blue above.
I can always find peace in these places, and as long as you live in my memory, I hope that you can too. I love you. Thank you. Goodbye.
You took me walking almost every day. But it's the winter mornings I remember. They were ours and ours alone. We'd wrap ourselves in coats and scarves and set out to challenge the cold once again; your slow, easy stride making a mockery of my tripping, stumbling run. In a world that forced me to grow up so fast, you were always able to make me feel like the child I ached to be. Even now, I smile to think of your ponderous grace.
You were a mapmaker to me. God's own cartographer. You seemed to know a thousand different routes to a thousand different places. You exist in a soft-focus, storybook part of my mind, where every journey was a new adventure and we never visited the same place twice.
The words are gone now. I can't bring back those stories you'd tell me. They're lost in that soundless place between the cadence of your accent and the ceaseless rhythm of your feet.
The words, but not the meaning. The meaning is in every frozen morning that takes me out of this darkened room and onto the streets of my past, in the shock of a body resuscitated by the cleansing gasps of winter, in the scent of every chimney breathing warmth into that forever blue above.
I can always find peace in these places, and as long as you live in my memory, I hope that you can too. I love you. Thank you. Goodbye.
posted by Michael at 1:08 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home