When I was in my twenties
and he in his fifties,
I parked across from the country cemetery
my father passed on his jogging days.
I waited in my car for the photograph
I (loving daughter) would turn into an oil painting—
our inescapable memento
of my father outrunning Death.
Dread of heart disease kept him running,
suffering to avoid the collapses
of his forefathers—
on golf course, on ski slope,
in bed, or in La-Z-Boy—
by the constancy
he imposed on himself,
imposed on all the calendars
of his life.
Suddenly there he was running
toward me and the harbors
of the heedful, impotent dead.
I slid down in my seat
raised toward him the birthday camera
given me after he and my mother
allowed me to abandon the piano
for lessons in photography and painting.
He did not notice me
as I shot the photos
of a lean man huffing his way
past Eternity
toward another moment
another year
another decade of life
on the road one more time
outrunning Death.
Robert Begiebing is the author of ten books, including fiction, criticism, memoir, and collected journalism. His fiction has been supported by the NH Council on the Arts, the Langum Prize for Historical Fiction, and by a Wallace Foundation Research Fellowship. In 2023, he received the Robert F. Lucid Award for Criticism.
