Robert Stanley Terwilliger

Somebody died today.
He fell away from my life like a leaf
that has lost the battle too early;
an Autumn leaf fallen in July.
A fallen leaf has died today:
a man I did not know;
the kind of man who made mistakes,
like leaving his tree too early.
Shunned for his lascivious drinking,
for the cockroaches that roamed upon his walls,
for sheets that were thumb tacked in doorways,
because a six-pack cost less than a new door.
*
It is summer and my willow tree is in full bloom.
He tells me of a fallen leaf's abandonment.
He forgets that he, too, once abandoned me.
He says he doesn't believe in second chances.
He forgets that I gave him a second chance once.
He says that that sort of a let down is unforgivable.
What a let down it is for me to see him so human.
We sit skipping rocks on the water
beneath our childhood's lamenting willow tree.
Father, who taught you how to advise me?
You preach on saving money:
you preach on being true to oneself;
yet you live from paycheck to paycheck
and your life is the result of matriarchal desires.
Are your parenting skills genetic?
*
When I die, I want to be buried beneath my willow tree.
I want to be proud, not ashamed,
of who I am and where I came from.
I want to embrace all the drunks,
the womanizers, and the homo-phobics,
because if genetics can pass down the bad,
mustn't they also pass down the good?
I don't know.
I wasn't given the chance to.
Somebody in my life has died today;
a man I did not know.
He was my grandfather.