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DappledThings.org

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The Wave

Dappled Things

Bruce Guernsey

In a picture my father took
when I was young
I am smiling and waving, “Hi,”
a fat-faced kid
waving for the camera,
for his father’s eye.

In Italy, years later,
I learned the way
they wave good-by,
the hand turned around
waving, “come back,”
when you say, “Ciao.”

I crossed the ocean to get there,
waving to my father
from the deck, both
when I left
and when I got back,
searching the crowd for his hand.

Physics tells us
the waves of the sea are a lie—
the water hardly moves
as energy passes through.
It is motion that washes ashore,
turns the sand.

Today, when my father
left on the train,
I waved again,
finding his window.
He held up his hand
and as the car rolled out on its tide,
I ran along with it like a kid,
waving in Italian.

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Filed Under: Lent/Easter 2015, Poetry

Mary, Queen of Angels 2020

Purchase Featuring nonfiction from Joshua Hren, fiction from Jennifer Marie Donahue and Rob Davidson and the winners and honorees of the Bakhita Prize in Visual Arts.

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