Across the bay, under its heavy Northwest sky,
horizon strips of deep light leaving the day.
The man on the shore stands in his own weather,
recalled by the light’s low angle to the same sky,
the day years ago they scatter his father’s ashes
across the Platte. He tries to figure how far today is
from the solstice. His watch shows two days to go,
and 4:06. In another fifty-four minutes the rates
will go down. He turns back home, sure beyond doubt:
I ought to call father. It’s time I called father.
Philip Booth
(1925-2007) Philip Booth published ten collections of poems including Letters from a Distant Land, which was the 1956 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets and Lifelines: Selected Poems, 1950-1999, which received the 2001 Poets' Prize, as well as, a book about writing, Trying to Say It: Outlooks and Insights on How Poems Happen. Booth won multiple honors including Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and the Theodore Roethke Prize.
More info