Lunch Poem

Though I still eat hot sandwiches
at the Jewish deli, and the trees are almost
bare again, and the sun transfigures my wooden table’s face
into how I used to picture the transfigured Son of Man’s;
even though, across the street, the white van—
a painting company’s, parked behind
a Crown Victoria—is being eaten up
by rust; and even though, behind that row
of houses, Lake Monona, I know, is gleaming,
it seems that somehow, even now,
my father continues to be dead.