© 2023 by Jack A. Urquhart
August 2, 2023
Dear Clangorous Son, Dear Dillon,
The anniversaries keep piling up, don't they?
It's ten years worth today, ten years of absence --
long enough to assemble a shakey colossus
of commemoratives.
Year after year, I shore them up.
And yet, the cracks keep coming,
all the best parts of you--
the sound of your raucous laughter,
the slurping specificity
of your atrocious table manners--
crumbling to scree.
Sometimes I wonder: how much longer
before all that's left are the dust
and bones bits of you.
Your Mom, eternal optimist,
keeps you together much better than I.
She insists you're happier now,
pleased as punch in some celestial afterlife,
amongst your dearly departed kith and kin.
She spins you leader of that pack,
a mastermind of misfits
and bah-bah-black sheep --
souls like you who never found
safe footing on terra firma.
Would that I was even half as creative
as she, who carried you into the world
and out again.
Would that I could conjure it as easily--
you kicking heavenly ass, paintballing holy shit
at a sanctimonious assemblage
of ambrosia-sipping deities and demi-gods,
the do-nothing lot of them binge-watching
the latest drops of "Entertainment Tonight,
Expanding Universe Edition."
How much easier to cope with your absence
if I could hold that bold notion --
you, delivering godly comeuppance
on behalf of the abandoned rest of us,
the countless souls left to languish
in this earthly wasteland of stardust,
broken dreams, and unhappy anniversaries.
Sending all my love,
Dad
About jaurquhart
Jack Andrew Urquhart was born in the American South. Following undergraduate work at the University of Florida, Gainesville, he taught in Florida's public schools. He earned a Master of Arts degree in English, Creative Writing, from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he was the winner of the Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Award for Fiction (1991). His work has appeared online at Clapboard House Literary Journal, Crazyhorse Literary Journal, and Standards: The International Journal of Multicultural Studies. He is the author of So They Say, a collection of self-contained, inter-connected stories and the short story, They Say You Can Stop Yourself Breathing. Formerly a writing instructor at the University of Colorado’s Writing Program, Mr. Urquhart was, until 2010, a senior analyst for the Judicial Branch of California. He resides in Washington State.
Every Man Jack ... 
This is beautiful.