Here is another Monday’s Poem of the Week, dealing with the always complicated subject of father/son relationships viewed through the lens of the natural world. No one ever gets it quite right; all we can do is strive to do our best.
Taxonomy of the Oaks
I push my father’s chair
Around the home
Streets named “Halcyon” and “Reminiscence”
He spots a squirrel on the tree and grunts
I am learning about the oaks
Leaves, barks and acorns
The squirrel climbs the wrinkled hide of the chestnut oak
Looking for a hooded fruit
He was a professor of glands
Patients by daylight
Papers and grants in the darkness
Rats in midnight cages
His left leg points straight like a prow
Toward a pin oak
Cultivar with tiny acorns
Needles at the tip of each finger of the hand
He is humbled now by time.
But then! The prestigious memberships
The winter grapefruit from grateful patients
The lectures named in his honor
I was a sullen and disrespecting son
Resented standing in the shadow
Hobbled myself
In defiance of his grandeur
Now we are companionable in the shade
Crunching the acorns of a northern red oak
With my feet and his wheels
He gasps as the pace quickens downhill
I tense my biceps and pull us back to a crawl
He relaxes back in his seat and sighs
We move on together now like a prayer
Black oak, swamp white oak, laurel oak, amen
- Milton Joel Goodman, MD
Medico Musings 