Moon at Half Past Noon

We drew our lines in stone and steel,
A lifelong war of forge and wheel.
I was the son he could not mold,
The stubborn heat he could not hold.
He wanted oak, I grew as vine;
He sought to prune my every line.
Through every decade, every year,
His was a voice of cold, sharp sneer.

I craved a nod, a slight applause,
Some tiny crack in iron jaws.
But walls were thick, and words were few,
And I was always wrong to you.
The ghost of his approval passed
Like shadows on the frosted glass—
Elusive, cold, and always far,
A distant, unreachable star.

Then time, the great eraser, came,
And swept away the fiery flame.
The tyrant mind began to fade,
The heavy guns, at last, unswayed.
Dementia stole the rigid lines,
The bitter roots, the tangled vines;
And from the ruins of his pride,
A stranger looked with open eyes.

He does not know my name or face,
Nor can his fading mind retrace
The decades spent in bitter fight,
Now buried in the coming night.
I am a guest he’s glad to meet,
Who brings him coffee, takes a seat.
He smiles at me—the son he scorned!
The boy whose youth was never mourned.

Because the cage of memory broke,
A gentle, softer man awoke.
“Oh, nice to see you, young man,” he says,
And chatters through the afternoon haze.
No criticism, no demand,
Just a soft, wrinkled, open hand.

The paradox cuts like a knife:
I have my father’s love at life’s end,
But only as a stranger’s friend.
Only because the past has passed,
I hold the warmth I lacked at last.

Here is the cruel, tragic jest
Of filial love put to the test:
To win the warmth I bled to find,
I had to lose my father’s mind.
The boy inside still weeps to see
What sickness chose to grant to me.

A gentle man who does not know
The son he broke is standing close.
I hold his hand, I stroke his hair,
And breathe the heavy, sweetened air.
This is the shape of what we are:
A bruised and broken, fallen star.
I am the son he never knew,
He is the father, kind and true.
And in the dark, where memories end,
I finally become his friend.