Poem on April 17
“Daddy always looked to the moon.
He claimed it as his own.”
I wrote those lyrics 20 years
ago for a song we recorded,
only loosely about my dad
about 10 years before he died.
Those two lines, though,
we’re an accurate portrayal;
Not that my father really
believed the moon was his,
but somewhere along the line,
because he loved it so much, he
probably just said something
like, “There’s my moon,” and
it caught on, so that every time
a family member, especially
my mother, who cherished her
husband, saw the moon, a good
full one, they’d say, there’s
daddy’s moon, or there’s
Glennie’s moon. As a child,
I fancied that my father’s
possession of the big rock
in the sky was literal, that as
a young man he constructed
it somehow and then just got
a really tall ladder to find
its perfect placement. In my
mind’s eye I can still see
that fantasy as if it were a
real one. At the very least
I will continue to think about
my dad every time I see the moon,
mythologizing my father,
keeping him present and
very much still alive as the
years pass and I try not to forget
what he smelled like,
the sound of his voice.
michael jarmer 