Belated Words

Write On!

Tag: memories

  • The Visitation: For Fathers Day

    I held my father’s hand once more last night, but only in a dream.  
I did not see his face or hear his voice or recognize a nod, but his 
ever-gentleness stood to sooth my unease of muddled senses.
Almost thirty quick years have gone since I stood by his bed.
Did I, at first, hold his hand? A white cloth, folded in half, 
lay over his mouth for moisture; rare tears traced crow’s-feet
to his pillow and I, new to dying, wondered if he cried from fear.  
But through the muffling wetness, struggling not to sob,
“Your mother…”  And then I understood, “I will take care of her.” 
I promised; only then…I remember, now…did I take his hand.
The hand I held last night was not that of thirty years before;
his hands, in life, had the square bluntness of his days of labor.
Always, he carried a pocketknife to turn the grease and grit 
from beneath his nails into minute, curled strings of grime. 
The hand I held in my dream was only his because I just knew 
and not recognition by touch; the hand I held was feminine,
covered with the sheltered, thin skin of one needing protection.
I’ve pondered the paradox all day, wondering why the hand
was his, but not; time could not have altered to such extreme,
a touch etched in memory.  Believing only in our faulty minds,
I can only conclude that I, so desiring that my father
might know I have kept my promise, conjured a dream, 
a visitation; the hand I knew as his is my mother’s I hold today.

This is a re-post from years ago; a memory of the time my father was dying in 1982.

  • pilgrimage

    When I was a kid, parents could still release their kids upon the world in morning’s sun with a simple, “Be back by suppertime.” We were free to wander the nearby pine thickets, brier patches, train tracks and trickling streams. We wanted to go to spots where our bikes had to be abandon; hastily pushed into the broom sage field to hide them. Yes, bikes were stolen back then but that was our worst fear; we felt safe otherwise. Each day was a pilgrimage and the destination was of little importance. I was searching for something to surprise, to quicken interest, to justify my prowling barefoot and shirtless through terrain replete with sharp stones, briars, thorns and snakes and I, or we, often did.

    Once, Charlie and I found a huge, dead frog and decided to dissect him. We, or at least, I learned more about biology (and guilt) that day than I would ever learn in a classroom. I also learned that persimmons sucked and muscadines were divine and that reaching to pick blackberries from a bush and suddenly seeing a king snake stretched along the length of the very cain you were about to touch could make you run faster than any amount of training or blood doping.

    Now, in my seventies and putting-off a knee replacement, my walks are limited to walking my dog in our neighborhood. Luckily, it is an old subdivision with many lots, too low to build on, left in woods and undergrowth. A few days ago I saw something I would have hiked days to see if that were possible. I remember lamenting several time over the past few years that I had never seem an owl in the wild despite many years of bird-watching (purely amateurish in execution). That day I saw one, a block away from my house; not just a little screech-owl sitting on a limb but a huge Great Horned Owl sitting atop a dead opossum just off the roadway. There was one of those movie moments when the frame is frozen and nothing moves, not even a breeze. I turned my head for an instant to check my dog’s response. I looked back and the owl was gone; silently he had vanished leaving his opossum and a memory I will always have; well, at least for a long while.  Walk with open eyes and heart; amazing things hid in plain sight.

  • Witness

    The leaves are gone.  Wind rejoices in
Their leaving for their dance betrays;
Painting hints of body on his shame.

Shoulders cringe under iced breath
ravaging this frigid, emptying street.
Chimes to the right sing winds intent,

To flee this memory, falling behind,
To allow us to lie in a contrived bliss
Like those wreaths on those graves.
    The leaves are gone.  Wind rejoiced in
their leaving for their dance betrayed:
painting hints of body on his shame.

A witness of this carnage, he whirled
in helplessness, sharing horrid chaos
with us despite our hands over our ears.

Shoulders cringe beneath iced-breath
ravaging this frigid, manicured yard.
Chimes to the right sing winds intent

to flee this memory, fall far away,
to lie in a contrived complacency like
these plastic wreaths on these graves.

  • Weather

    “What is this weather in my soul?

    This nameless weather:

    Squirrel’s flag-tail pulsating

    A silent, nil day.

    Exceptional drought……

    memory’s ceaseless loop roils;

    turkey vultures soar.

  • poor

    poor:

    The word itself appears dried up,

    too scantily clad to survive,

    too striped of bone, devoid of desire;

    no evident, attendant Bling!

    bling: a none-existent word back then

    all through the slow, long years of youth

    when we said fancy-stuff, as in,

    “Who really wants that fancy stuff?”

    licking our lips in blusterous denial.

    I don’t remember being poor or “pour”

    as I would have said back then….and still do.

    Daddy always worked long, hard hours,

    burnt dark pumping gas…fixing flats.

    We always had a rust-free, used car

    staunchly devoid of Bling! except

    that ’59 Chevy with fender-skirts

    and air and re-upholstered seats!

    We always had a house; tiny but clean,

    clapboarded, rural rentals with,

    in my earliest years, an outhouse,

    but in my room, in the darkest spot,

    a child’s white enameled pot with

    a red-rimed lid was kept for me;

    I did have a pot to piss in.

    I did not feel so different

    because of that….I did not know

    the reason I felt singular.

    I remember first grade school bus

    and being called sunk-eyes; me,

    the poster kid for sickly-child

    with breath pilfering asthma,

    a snot-rag dampening my pocket

    during the glories of Spring and Fall

    and being alone, balled-up,

    in a paint-peeled Adirondack

    built from scrap and hope by dad

    in a rented yard in brilliant sun,

    and wondering if pollen had

    attacked my heart as it had

    my nose and lungs and eyes

    and infected hope, stolen joy

    and would I ever unclasp my knees

    and unfurl my wheezing mind.