I dreamt of my father the other night. When they come in dreams my mother and my father seem very real and I reach out to them.
My father died in 1995 at the age of 89. He was a good man and a beloved father. I often think of him but I have seldom been able to write about him. Once, however, I spent a few days up the Essequibo and in the peace and beauty of that great river my father’s life and what he meant to me came into clear focus and I did write some private thoughts about him.
That night of extraordinary beauty I sat by the river’s edge with the forest trees entangled with stars at my back and watched a giant moon, shining through the smoke of wood-fires, rise fiery red across the great river. It was one of those occasions when the smallness and transience of an individual life becomes very real. For hours as the moon rose and slipped