Missed Chance Poem by Daniel Trevelyn Joseph

I was pushed in a well of sadness today
When Tilaka my wife told me at breakfast,
“Twenty-odd years ago, in Yashodhan building
Papa had re-read Dickens and others including
Pickwick Papers” she got from Rajabai Tower.

I wish I had known, or rather shown interest.
Happy Dad would have been if I had sat with
Him asking him what he had read that day -
I remember his reading on his easy chair -
And what he thought of characters, figuring.

When young, Papa used to talk about Elizabeth
And Darcy of Jane Austen, or D'artagnan of Gascony
Count Monte Cristo of Dumas, and Henry Esmond of Thackeray
To me, and he would read Three Men in a Boat
By Jerome K Jerome, and laugh till tears came.

As I was lying down later today in my bed
I felt heart-constricted severely, like going mad,
That I did not have elementary courtesy, nor knew
How to please my Dad in his sixties and seventies,
Though he never had a word of complaint, demand.