My Father’s Birthday Sonnet

My father’s birthday today who said he never believed

He would ever see the Berlin Wall come down

Who grew his remaining hair into a ponytail

And hummed Dylan’s Tambourine Man” all wrong

What would he make of our Covid mess, would he believe

Some day it too will end? What would he make of me?

Have I this very morning become him? Into the mirror I stare

Does everything solid really melt into air?

So is that our problem that we’ve inhaled

All the unfinished past, no wonder it’s now infecting us

Or kicking us in the ass as he also used to say

My father were you alive today

I present you your great grandchildren

Father, please tell me what to say.

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