As frail as foam dissolving on the shore,
as light as August chaff upon the air,
my father stands between his sisters, more
ancestral than alive. So pale and spare
he seems to me, among contagious age,
I want to hug him firmly to my chest
and twirl him with me in a joyous cage
of love, of dance, of energy, of rest.

He let me stand upon his moving feet
when he was vigorous and I was five –
we spun together in a stilted dance.
If he’d allow, I’d hold him now in neat
embrace, who taught me how to be alive,
but fussy petulance forestalls my chance.