Rounds (Carolyn Foster Segal)

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“Thank you for

coming,” my father says

at the beginning and

end of each visit, and “How’s

the family?” and “Do you know

if there’s a kind of flower called

rose?” When we go for a drive,

he calls out the name

of each street

as if it were

an exotic place he’s seeing

for the first time,

as indeed he is, each day blank

and shimmering

and open, like

the snow-covered lawn

that he’s studying now.

“That’s snow,” I tell him, and

he says, “Imagine that.”

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Carolyn Foster Segal teaches creative writing, American literature, and film at Cedar Crest college, in Allentown, PA. She writes humorous essays for The Chronicle of Higher Ed, Inside Higher Ed, and The Irascible Professor; her other essays, stories, and poems have appeared in over fifty publications, including, most recently, 2RiverView and Long Island Quarterly.

This poem is copyright 2009 by Carolyn Foster Segal and is posted here with permission.
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