Silence for My Father

BY DEENA METZGER

This is the silence around the poem of the death of my father.
This is the silence before the poem.

While my father was dying, the Challenger was exploding on TV
Again and again. I watched it happen. In his hospital room,
I followed his breath. Then it stopped.

This is the silence in a poem about the dying of the father.


We’re burning the earth. We’re burning the sky.

Here is another silence in the middle of the poem about the immolation of the Fathers.

The pyres of bodies in Saigon.
The burned air
The charred limbs.
Ash.
Rancid flames.
Heat
Light
Fire

                                  We turn away.

Here is another silence within the poem about the burial of the fire.

When my father died, the rains poured down the moment I picked up the shovel of earth.
I staggered under the weight of the water.

Another silence please.


I have always wanted to be a woman of fire.
I will have to learn how to rain.
Gently, I will learn how to rain.

I have set fire to your green fields,
May I be water to your burning lands.

Please join me in this last silence at the end of the poem of fire.

I like how this poem deals with death and I can see how that’s a theme in the poem. For example, the challenger explosion was something that involved death as well as her father dying. Also the burning bodies in Saigon was an event involving death and was catastrophic. Then the poem has a kind of second half that’s referring to after her dad is dead and how at first she was fire, courageous and reckless, maybe a bit powerful, but now she has to put out her fires and make things better. Because water puts out fires.