Poetry of Issue #7        Page 37

NOVEMBER DREAM

Eleven months after my father’s death
I buy a watch for ten dollars
Not to tell the time or look well-to-do
No, it’s cheap, it’s a bargain, rock bottom.
Then I give the watch away
To a stranger I happen to meet;
And this is the part I don’t get
This spur-of-the-moment
Hand-off makes my father glad.
He shakes his head and laughs
He is impressed. When he was alive
I saw him do that head shake & smile
Maybe a couple of times.
He wasn’t impressed with me
All that often, and yet
It always made me happy
When he was, when I’d done
What he would have done,
If he had ever been a giving person.

  Angelo Verga