We hesitate, glance over our shoulders,
hear whispers from our past,
and murmur, “Mother,” “Father” to ghosts long gone.

We celebrated Father’s Day today in our empty nest with friends and family who, like us, were without either kids or parents. Tea was served, with finger sandwiches, scones and cookies too numerous to consume. Yum, with people we love.

Outside, rain. Inside, warmth and laughter, dogs soaking up our love, and a Skype call with the young man who made us both parents some two decades ago. Before and after our guests left, I wrote two poems, one of them my first sonnet ever and an homage of sorts to lichens and Mother Earth. (I wrote a sonnet!) The other, inspired by the holiday, includes the lines quoted above.

I love looking at pictures of all my friends’ parents shared on Facebook and Instagram on Father’s Day and Mother’s Day. It’s a gentle reminder of our roots. A childhood friend shared a picture of her dad with a litter of Dalmatian puppies that included the first dog I ever got to call my own: Lucky, a patch-eared boy who loved us all but none more than my mother, who reared and trained him, and nursed him back to health after a fight that could have killed him. The picture brought back his memory, along with my mom’s.