The warning of a storm
this late spring evening
sets us to work securing
windows from rain
stashing tools in the shed
and ensuring all our devices
are fully charged because
should the power fail, I guess
we might not choose to pass
the night by candlelight
reading poems to each other.
(in memory of my father)
i swim in the sea
of weeds that succeed
in surrounding
this post-bellum abode
mold on the molding
fascia old with it
the fold of the door
gnawed by mice
fat in the absence of rats
failing to do
what should be done,
like the porch
i abandon to a random swarm.
i try not to give in
to some alarm waiting
to go off
though not a farmer
you are some old farmer
from wendell berry
who weary in your chair
stopped rocking and
in your unarmed manner
sparked our last conversation
you, like a play’s soothsayer,
foretold everything you saw
whatever you saw
how did you know
what i did not know:
the next afternoon
you’d be dead in my arms
but that was not the end
only the start
of our two-score talk,
the little you said
was about all that was said
life has the genius
of wheels that spin happiness
out until there’s an accident
but in accidents and incidents
you learn to simply go on
be a servant to others
being your own servant
is like those guys in space
at zero G, it makes you free
but for what,
do the hard work of gravity
I remember you, Daddy, as the Marlboro Man,
watching as you lean on a split-rail fence at sunset,
lighting up—the slow deep drag you hold in your lungs
as long as you can, swelling your chest
with tar and ashes and the greatest solace
you’ve ever known.
You grow the stuff, a fourth-generation master
of curing the green tobacco leaves of July and August
to the color of the burlap sacks
we’ll haul them off to market in, come September.
Sometimes you’ll hold a golden leaf to your nose
and breathe in its dark bouquet
like a rich man savoring a snifter of brandy
in a soft leather chair.
You don’t allow the word cancer to be spoken in our house.
When by chance I’m the one to tell you
your best friend died of it,
I watch you cry for the first time
and the last.
At the fence, you know I’m watching from the porch,
know I’ll run from this farm as soon as I can,
know it ends with you. You fire up another Marlboro
and pull on it hard, its tip flaring
in the fading light.
Your face, cured half a century
in the smoke you exhale from two packs a day,
is your finest brightleaf,
veined, tanned, supple, creased,
a parchment treasure map that in my mind
I fold and re-fold till it’s soft as linen,
ready to memorize and burn.
As a child my hair was ruler-straight.
I saw the curly-headed ones as blessed,
some special stock made them fancier,
their tops enhanced with twirls
and curls, a crown of fortune
enfolded them. Somehow they were
God’s beloved, beings with halos
of favor.
And now, miraculously, late
in life, from my own top,
these twirling tresses, curving
and curling enveloping my skull
with a blessing—adornment
to make royalty weep.
My inner child stunned
and unbelieving, I touch
my hair shyly, stroke it
just to be sure it’s true.
I’ve gone from plain Jane
to runway model.
i loved my father
dearly
i also
feared
him
which may have been
his
plan
all
along
Imagine, if you will, you
are standing in a field,
looking at the night sky,
and you notice a few fuzzy patches,
in addition to the many stars
Imagine each fuzzy patch is a
distant galaxy (not hard to do–
see: Andromeda) now
Imagine you are traveling, say,
186,000 miles per second and
the nearest galaxy is 2.5 million light-
years away
It would take you 2.5 million years to get
there, so long as you didn’t slow down–
even for a second
Imagine you enter this other
galaxy and you dive into one
spiral arm, or other,
and you find an average star with
average planets and you travel
to one of those planets
Imagine you find a person,
not unlike yourself (not as far-fetched as you might think–
see: periodic table), standing
in a field, looking at a fuzzy patch
you tell them is called
The Milky Way
Imagine you have a conversation
about what lies here, there, and
in between: the vast distances,
the empty voids, the few (considering the
volume of this universe) dots of
light we call stars
Imagine you discuss the trillions
of galaxies, each will many billions
of stars and many millions of planets,
and you realize that, were you to travel
to all those places, you would never find
another just like them–or
just like you.
