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My Father.
By Lino C. Viola
My father, who was he?
I simply have no clue,
I never had a chance to talk to him,
He never told me what to do
I know he was a fisherman,
Gaeta, Italy he called home.
It was on this gorgeous peninsula
Where a rowboat became his throne.
He worked hard to make a living
Every day he would cast his net,
And hope that the Lord would bless him
With a catch that would pay off his debt.
He never took me with him
Oh, how I wish it wasn't so.
He never had the opportunity
The Lord called him and he had to go
I was in my mother's womb.
It was December of forty six,
The war had just ended
My father was twenty-six
With a coastal storm a' brewing
A concern of tangled nets,
Brought the fisherman to Serapo beach
To what would be his last catch
As a daughter of a fisherman
My mother learned of the peril
When one deals with storms at sea
You are playing with the devil.
She had warned him many times
But his stubbornness took control
In his fight to save his nets
His last catch, a mine, would explode.
Deep inside my mother's womb
I could feel that something was wrong.
I was at my father's side,
One day later he was gone.
I could sense that he truly fought
To stay alive to be with me.
Oh, how I wish I could have touched him
But it just wasn't meant to be
Two months later I came into the world
Never realizing what was missing,
You see my mother's brothers and sisters
Played a big part in my upbringing.
I owe quite a bit to my uncle Luigi
I pray to the Lord God to rest his soul
He sacrificed eight years of his life
To be my father figure was his goal
It wasn't until my teenage years
When I started to feel a void.
I think you too would start questioning
Some of the things you had been told.
At the age of eighteen I was given a gift
What this did for me no money could buy.
It was a picture of my father
Finally seeing him brought tears to my eyes.
I carefully framed it, kept it nearby
So that I could be close by his side
I think of him more with each passing day
And of what could have been if he were alive.
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