Searching For My Father's Voice

My dad in his office, mid 1980's

Daddy? I ask the tape player,
Is that you?
It is Tom Clark. Not Dad.
The jovial
joking commentator on
NPR
WPR
takes me right back
to my mother's bedside
listening to Chapter a Day
falling into nap.

This man is not my father,
nor the next, a guest on Jean Feraca's show.
I look out the window at the crocuses
just now popping up in my late-blooming
yard. Twenty-four years ago
these bloomed in my mother's shade
mid-March, the day Daddy died.
Now it is late April,
two hours south
and I am still searching for his voice.

I put in another cassette. These are
promising - Maxell from the mid-80's
and the shows are ones I know
they listened to together.
I listen to silence, silence, silence
90 minutes of it on each side. 
I am rapt with anticipation,
dread. The last time I heard Dad's voice
I was in my teens and accidentally found
him yelling at the end
of a radio recording.

Here I am hoping I will find his voice.
Hoping I won't.