"Forgiving Our Fathers"

Read during the final scene, this poem is just one of the reasons I love the film Smoke Signals.

How do we forgive our fathers?
Maybe in a dream.

Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often,
or forever,
when we were little?

Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage,
or for making us nervous
because there never seemed to be any rage there at all?

Do we forgive our fathers for marrying,
or not marrying,
our mothers?

Or divorcing,
or not divorcing,
our mothers?

And shall we forgive them for their excesses
of warmth
or coldness?

Shall we forgive them
for pushing
or leaning?

For shutting doors?
For speaking through walls?

Or never speaking?
Or never being silent?

Do we forgive our fathers in our age or in theirs?

Or in their deaths,
saying it to them,
or not saying it?

If we forgive our fathers, what is left?

-Dick Lourie
(Originally published in a longer version titled "Forgiving Our Fathers" in a book of poems titled Ghost Radio.)