The accountant’s daughter.

Today is my parents’ wedding anniversary. Here is a poem my Dad wrote for my Mom, shortly after she began to lose her sight from radiation treatments.

~

THE ACCOUNTANT’S DAUGHTER, ALMOST BLIND
by Donald E. Byrne Jr.

You tell me face to face you have figured out
where your missing money was. I know how proud
you feel: the accountant’s daughter, almost blind,
who still can reconcile a bottom line.

But your eyes align uneven on my face.
The blind left slips slightly down to a place
on my cheek. The right one seeks my eyes, but finds
only where they were, inferred from the outline

it sees of my head. You will never see again
in my eyes what my eyes see in you. Still, I can
see your soul in those darker windows, that see
by memory what they love, and reconcile me,

too, like a sum momentarily lost, then
found exactly where it should have been.

~

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