I suspect that many of us would have liked to get to know our parents when they were young and full of the promises the world seemed to make.

By the time I really focused on my father as a person, he had lived through the Depression, World War II and had spent most of his adult and post war life working his way through college and night law school. And then I was off to college and the Navy and starting a family of my own. Ultimately, by the time I had the desire and need to really learn about him, and to ask the meaningful questions, he was too old and worn down to answer them.

I wrote Wishes (In the Cat’s Eye, 2009) as an expression of those regrets. In retrospect, I am not sure any of us get to really know our parents. They grow up in a different age and speak a different language. Life flows along too quickly and the river changes shape by the second.

Glenn K. Currie

 

Wishes

 

I wish that I had known you,

A child with a runny nose,

Rubbing life upon your sleeve,

Shrugging off its ebbs and flows.

 

I wish I could have seen you,

Creating drawings in the street,

Before the rain erased the chalk,

Your picture incomplete.

 

I wish that I had heard you,

In the choir at St. Paul’s,

A voice still searching, sweet and new,

Scaling man-made walls.

 

I wish we had really talked,

When hopes and dreams still flamed,

Before the shades of life were drawn,

And only wishes remained.