Missing Daddy

Daddy
1979

The latest assignment for my poetry class is to write a poem to a deceased person. Here's my poem to my father who passed away on June 2, 1998. I'll be sharing it in class tomorrow night.
I made some revisions to the first poem I wrote for the class based on feedback from the teacher and the other students. You can read the revised and improved poem here: All Around Me A Poem.

Missing Daddy

I searched for you everywhere at first. 

In my sleep—
    and you sometimes obliged.
In the man across the street, the one walking away from me—
    cuffed khakis, plaid shirt, navy windbreaker, cap worn high.
In the single gardenia blossom that appeared that first September,
    startling and out of order.
Beneath the sycamore and the pines you planted,
in your dresser drawer and the junk house out back,
in crumpled letters, short simple notes I saved from college.
I searched yellowed albums of faded photographs for the rare one of you,
    rarer still, one of us together.
I thought I felt you brush past me in the breeze,
watched you float by on the swallowtail,
and heard you in the mourning dove’s call.

I find you now in my love of silence and stillness,
on the sunny side of the house in winter,
in the four horses that hang over the mantle, 
in the bookshelf you made from a discarded sign,
in the tic-tic of the Baby Ben,
in George Jones’ greatest hits and John Wayne's westerns.

I found you on my walk this afternoon
    amid a shower of leaves and drizzly mist.
So close—
like a Saturday afternoon from my childhood,
    I thought I might see you on the other side of the screened door,
    in your recliner, watching The Porter Wagoner Show.