One morning state police
escort us to your grave
the next my flight is canceled.

Maintenance issues breaking
out all over. You would speak
of a "grand theory," something

tying all this together, but
you had none yourself, none
that reached me then or now

as I drive your car slowly
into the tranquil streets
of my youth. Here is where

I learned to ride a bike, on
this high hill that is no
hill at all. And still I fell.

And now you descend and
still I fall. And here is where
I learned to doubt, in the chapel

where we donned black skullcaps
that meant nothing, I tell you.
If god speaks it is elsewhere.

And here are my own children
rooted and uncertain
watching me speak to you.

You watched the news every night
worried if I did not make "air"-
traveling, sick, useless, lost.

Now that you are gone-
traffic parted by the state police-
can I, too, disappear?

About this poem
"On the day of my father's funeral I was a child, I was father to my children, I was somehow father to my father. And the traffic magically parted. 'Succession' tries to capture the range of emotions and experiences."
-Jeffrey Brown

About Jeffrey Brown

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2015 Jeffrey Brown. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate