|
Front Porch Nonfiction
Issue 6
- The Circle’s End by Sarah Davis
He was an October man.
“Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness!”
is the first line of Keats's ode
“To Autumn”
and the first line I found in my father's poetry journal. The cover itself, torn and faded, is laden with a heavy harvest of rust-colored gourds, yellow-orange pumpkins, and ivory-speckled ears of corn. He had been moved to record these words on October 25, 1970, thirty-five years before his death.
He was born October 28, 1944, in Buffalo, NY. The date of his birth, a declaration of the beginning of the life of my father, didn't mean anything to me until October 5, 2005. That's the day I found the circle's end. His life had come full circle. There was not to be an ongoing wrapping around or infinite spinning for he had fallen down one last time. Michael Kachelmeyer was declared dead of cardiac arrest at 12:25 A.M. The circle had come to an end.
[read full piece]
|
