"Last Testament" by Lory Bedikian

Last Testament

It’s not that you had no will drawn up,
no money left or home paid off for mother,

no life insurance or expensive cars, boats,
no stocks and bonds, buried treasure,

a last-minute savings fund in my name alone,
oh, Dad, it’s that it took you five years to go,

the same amount of time it took the boys to grow,
and while they learned to write one letter at a time,

you could not write the letters as well anymore
and what I looked for was not that earthly wealth

(lord knows it would have definitely, for us both, helped),
but I searched for that final note. I hoped to open it

your handwriting a faded telegram, a cuneiform
of unsaid love, some sort of soliloquy within which

finally, the surprise, an element that proved we did
not really know you, something we almost hoped for,

to discover your passion had been professional
hockey, or if only you had become a paleontologist

because back in the old country or old countries —
you never really had one homeland — you could have

worked and saved and been slave to no system.
Fine. It didn’t have to be a letter. Perhaps you could have

left your nametags from the departments stores,
their worn edges from tossing them on the console

by the evening door, after punching out one more time.
I didn’t want so much mystery. I needed something left

behind besides your face which surfaces now and then
in Jackie Gleason’s ridiculous rants, in the stained glass

of the chapel where a butterfly would not leave me alone.
I wanted more than a note, I wanted to know, to know

if you wanted to stay with us, or finally, willingly, go.

Photo Credit: Staff