We Lose Another Ohio Poet

The News and Other Poems.
Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. PS3553 .I86 N49 2002.
http://www.cpl.org/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?isbn=0268036578

Do we miss a thing we love less
if, in going away from us, it grows beautiful?
It rainedall weekend, and the leaves
this morning are going
from brown and tan to crimson.
The splendor flaming from
these trees compensates us,
nearly, for what autumn takes
leaf by leaf, the lined white face
of a father growing noble
the angrier, more confused
he goes, rain like angry bees,
his empty eyes, a cold wind
coming on like dementia.

("A Brief History of Fathers")