There You Lie Down (a poem of my father)

 

There You Lie Down

 

Up in there, in the shadowed and sunlit glen . . . you will lie.

Scattered amongst the meadow where we hunted.

You a man, with your boys, your sons.

Wanting to be like you, yet unlike you.

Hunting for what it is to be a boy then a man.

 

You are there now, scattered in the meadows and soaring trees,

Your harrowed flesh and bone and ashes of your desire

Now, now, and now again, memories born and die again,

part of the fabric of the universe and our lives.

 

Soon the trees that are you will die and be reborn,

A house, a bed, a chair, a crib with a rocking baby softly cooing.

There you will lie . . . thinking what has become of me?

Their remains, like you, pass on and new growth echoes. 

 

There you will lie . . .

Scattered amongst the trees of memory and our footprints,

With sounds of our tears, our chats, our dreams of you, what has been and will be.

The atoms, quarks, and particles of an expanding universe

Careening to immutable laws,

Resulting in birth, life, death ad infinitum.

 

 

David McCullough

February 26, 20224