The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Bob Meszaros

Searching For My Father

The brick and plasters gone;
what remains of Lovell Grammar School
is buried here, in two small cardboard boxes.

I turn the take-up reel by hand,
exposing each microfilmed attendance sheet
to light.  Slowly, the lists of names, centered
and enlarged, appear and disappear.

On Miss Spenser's list of eighth grade boys,
among the tardy and the missing, I find
you present, father, each day of your
thirteenth year, the year the Great War ended.

Beside your name an unbroken line
of five day weeks, a history of unmarked boxes
between Ed Mattoy and Robert Moore,
between "to work" and "influenza."