You don't miss your water

the long version

Here are twenty-one poems yoked by thought and language to the filial bond and set in motion by the looming death of a cold and distant father. Whether physically absent or emotionally estranged, the father in these poems has always been a dominating, difficult presence in the lives of his family: the daughter run wild, the son who has disappointed, the wife he never did marry. Watching his father ebb away, the poet wonders at the man's ornery and cantankerous reality even in the face of death - and at his own newfound sense of power. But as well, he searches for a bond, an acknowledgment that he is his father's son.