"Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead" Andrew Hudgins

First of all, I looked up elegy to see if it meant the same thing as eulogy; it doesn't. According to dictionary.com, the definition of elegy is a mournful, melancholy, or plaintive poem, esp. a funeral song or lament for the dead. So really the speaker is following the definition of a melancholy poem, even though his father is not dead. This poem is about a man who cannot handle the fact that his father is about to die and is accepting of that fact. He says that he thinks his father "wants to go,/ a little bit - a new desire/ to travel." I thought that was an interesting way for his father to think about it, "embarking on a trip." He says that he cannot look at it that way. Obviously he has talked to his father about this, because in lines 10-12, he says "He thinks he'll wrap me in his arms and laugh,/ the way he did when I arrived/ on earth." I think that is a neat way to think about that as well. Heaven is where one is created and where one ends up after he/she dies. The speaker does not feel the same; he follows that statement by simply saying "I do not." I think that the speaker is just afraid to face life without his father on earth.