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."

Bob Meszaros taught English at Hamden High School in Hamden, Connecticut, for thirty-two years. He retired from high school teaching in June of 1999. He now teaches part time at Quinnipiac University. His poems have appeared in The Connecticut Review, Main Street Rag, Tar River Poetry, The Red Wheelbarrow, Concho River Review, and others.