A Happy Birthday
Ted Kooser
This evening, I sat by an open window
and read till the light was gone and the book
was no more than a part of the darkness.
I could easily have switched on a lamp,
but I wanted to ride this day down into night,
to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page
with the pale gray ghost of my hand.
It is my father's eighty-third birthday today. Eight decades is a very long time. In his lifetime he's seen the world reinvent and turn itself inside out countless times, dictators, despots, and great leaders, come and go, he has witnessed wars of such atrocity that only the twentieth century could claim, and technology contain the world and offer up its bounty in a hand held phone.
My father got out "from under the tub" and travelled "over the mountain" in his lifetime, and has compressed more experience into his eighty three years than most ever will.
My father is a reader and passed his love of books to his children. He is a storyteller, and in another life, I think he would have been a writer. Or a boxer, such is his spirit.
The final page has yet to be turned in the book of Daniel, and like the speaker of the poem, I prefer to think he will ride the day down into night.
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