2 Poems by Heidi Larsen

A Father’s Goodbye

Your last breaths relayed your lifetime of unexpressed love to me.
I only wish the phone could have rewinded the years of pain.
I donned on the gear, protecting me from an unknown virus;
The only thing still left alive on you.
I was an alien alone in a foreign land,
Saying goodbye to a stranger masked with machines.
Technology breathed for you, but couldn’t bring you back to me.
I raised my fist to God. “Don’t take him unless he’s given his life to You.”
I prayed. I sang Christian songs from your childhood. I anointed you with my tears.
You neither blinked, nor squeezed a reply.
You were as removed in death as you had been in life. Then I saw it, a bruised heart upon your arm.
The IV needle had made its damage, yet God had left His answer clear.
“He is mine. My mark is upon him. I have loved him with My everlasting love.”
I cried. I let go. God will take care of him now.
I will see him again someday,
Where he will tell me that he loves me
Face to face.


My Father’s Shirt

I wore my father’s shirt today.
It hugged me with his arms.
I disappeared deep inside,
I wish that he was still here.
Those arms used to pick me up.
They fixed my car when it broke.
They showed much care for me.
I wish that he was still here.
He brought me tomato plants.
My favorite summer treat.
He watered, weeded and hoed.
I wish that he was still here.
It is tough to stand on my own right now.
My car is always broke.
I haven’t had a garden since.
I wish that he was still here.
For all I have are these empty holes
Where his arms should right here be
Holding me up and giving me treats
And wearing this shirt, instead of me.


Bionote

Heidi Larsen, M.Ed. is a 4th-grade teacher at a small Christian school in Central Massachusetts. She is a poet and a natural born storyteller. Her poems have been featured in the books Our Wild Winds, Wandering Roots, as well as in Rock Walls and Open Pastures, each a Quabbin Quills Anthology, and showcased in Creative Connections Art Gallery and in The New Dawn Arts Center. She is the author of My Bible- A Daily Prayer Journal. Her words come because they must. They have eeked out, late at night, when no one else was looking. They are her search for meaning, her grief in loss, her faith in a God who will never leave, and the intimate breath that she shares with this world of fragmented people.