A Father’s Comfort Remembered
Antoinette F. Winstead
February 5, 2023
Dear Father,
Mother found a letter you wrote me
nearly forty years ago
an offer of comfort
for my grief
over a friend lost too young
on a Texas football field.
As I reread your words
written in your perfected
engineer learned print
I remembered with visceral recall
the warmth of your love
and why you have always been
my touchstone.
Overwhelmed, I wept
as if the wounds of loss
freshly dealt
my anguish anew
for I’d truly forgotten
the comfort of your words
offered all those years ago.
Two pages
sealed with love
four decades old
father to daughter
a remembrance of what was
and continues in my heart
though now your passing I mourn
With no letter of comfort
for you, my dearly beloved father
a decade’s departed
as you once penned for me
that long-forgotten September
forty years ago
when I took for granted your wisdom.
Your precious wisdom
in my mourning
thought lost forever
until Mother found your letter.
Even in death
you remain
my touchstone.
With love eternal,
your daughter.
Antoinette F. Winstead, a poet, author, playwright, director, and actor, teaches film and theater courses at Our Lady of the Lake University where she serves as the Director of the Escobedo School of Mass Communication and Theater and also as the Program Head for the Drama program. Her poetry has been published in The Ekphrastic Review, Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Voice de la Luna, and the 2022 Texas Poetry Calendar. For her poem “Life Is” she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the editor of Jerry Jazz Musician.
