Being Dad

Strangely I think of myself as my father,

not just like him, he, himself,

taking a tottering step to the bathroom,

barefoot in the middle of the night.

Losing his wife did not define him completely

more than anything else; nor did it his father;

Nor does it me: a third plodding widower,

knowing this life can be lived well enough,

and people have already done it, probably

sometimes in the dark.