There is a certain cruelty in knowing
where my birth father is buried, a picture
of his headstone in the National Cemetery,
his face as I know it cropped from a group photo
of his unit while stationed in New Hampshire.
The cruelty is not in that fact, or that I have
a picture of the grave of my first adoptive
father I took in the Jewish cemetery
in Maryland and a picture of him
holding me as a child and one from his obituary.
One man I never knew, one I knew
for all of two years but of who I have
no real recollection or memories.
No the cruelty is that father who raised
me from age five into adulthood,
who died in the hospital at which
I had visited him months before,
whose face is captured in many photos
is buried somewhere, I assume, although
I have no idea where, for his son, he
of his flesh, has denied me that knowledge.
The cruelty, you see, is that I can visit
the graves of those fathers I never knew
but not the father who shaped me
into the man I am today.