Photo: Creative Commons
To see my father age before my eyes
Inherited eyes keen to recognize the insensitivity of a barren, West Texas landscape in the heat of summer
A once stoic, authoritative, swaggering rock was now crumbling soil
When winds slowly picked away layer after layer of his countenance
I ran with cupped hands to retrieve what the wind stole – if only to delay the inevitable a little while longer
In a geology of generations, machismo, traditions, ideas born to the uneducated child of an overbearing mother, each brittle layer was stolen by a new wind while escaping grains nestled themselves between the needles of saguaros
As shadows encircled above, his stride was slow, his posture hunched
Every windward step taxed his body
The protector who once held my hand to cross the creek bed, I now protected him
The provider who was always there for me, I was now there for him
I turned to block him from the wind and sky and looked into his surrendering eyes
He looked back into mine
Just then I felt the wind penetrate my enlarging pores
Before we turned our eyes into the wind
I grabbed at that moment anticipating the indifferent gust that would diminish it to dust
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