Directly by Sharon Olds

Directly

Then, one late afternoon, 

I understand:  the harm my father 

did us is receding.  I never thought 

it would happen, I thought his harm was stronger than that, 

like God’s harm—flood, or birth without 

eyes, with mounds of tissue, no retina, no 

pupil, the way my father on the couch did not 

seem not to be using eyes 

but not to have them, or to have objects 

for eyes—Jocastal dress-brooches. 

But he had not been hated, so he did not hate us, 

just scorned us, and it is wearing off. 

My son and daughter are grown, they are well 

as if by some miracle.  The afternoon has a 

quality of miracle, the starlings all facing 

the west, his grave.  I come to the window 

as if to open it, and whisper, 

My father’s harm is fading.  Then, 

I think that he would be glad to hear it 

directly from me, 

so I come to where you are, bone 

settled under the dewed tangle 

of the blackish Northwoods moss like the crossroads 

hair of a beloved.  I come to you here 

because it is home:  your done-with body 

broken back down into earth, holding 

its solemn incapable beauty.