IS THAT YOU DAD?

You know dad, that day when you were not around 
I was filled  with dread .
 Pinioned to  the bed 
By four arms from the left four from the right.
Ah, the night was not at all bright 
It was dark like a chocolate cookie
And the moon  scary and spooky. 
Grotesque faces  
With mammoth sideburns
Holding lanterns
In hirsute hands,  cackled  
While I on the bed lay shackled. 

This was five days after you  died 
Oh, how I had cried.
Would you have raged against the dying light
And not gone gentle into that good night 
Had you but known?
 But alas, now you had flown.
But hadn't a clairvoyant
In a voice buoyant
Sitting in our drawing room on the cushioned settee
Told you , you  would live to be eighty?

Ah, is that you, sitting hunched over your study table
Evaluating  answer sheets 
And preparing your lecture on Keats?
While the woman in white  looks on 
Great expectations    stare ?
And the moonstone shines
With a mysterious air?
Ah, it is not fair.

In this bibliophilic confusion
There is a sad profusion 
Of memories.
Did I just catch a glimpse of you
 Jumping over the boundary wall
Ah , what if you had had a fall
With the tennis racket clutched in your hand?
And  under the moonlit sky
Standing mighty and high
Reciting the owl and the pussy cat in your voice grand?

With a hat on your head  
Your trousers' ends securely clipped 
To the university, on your cycle you had ventured out
 Many a time  clearing  my niggling doubt.
Ah, your mouth watering pancakes slathered
 With chocolate  syrup.
Your handsome face wreathed in smiles
 While the tea became cold in your   tea cup
And mom looked on warmly.

Who was it speaking in that powerful baritone?
I felt a sudden chill in every bone. 
A hand feathery in its softness
On my forehead did press . 
"Sweet my child,my magpie robin I am here for  thee
And will live for thee ."

And  you did live for me.
In me  
Around me  
Inside me . 
As promised that day
Dad,  you never left
And with your unending love 
I never felt lost
 Or bereft.