My gift to you
the father I never had
present, attentive,
committed to not only
your survival but your success.
Sharing of familial connects
and more importantly,
loving and loyal
to the mother you possess.
the father I never had
present, attentive,
committed to not only
your survival but your success.
Sharing of familial connects
and more importantly,
loving and loyal
to the mother you possess.
Bobby Sox and Saddle Shoes
Page Boy, Duck Tail, Beehive haircuts
skirts with multi crinoline slips
Madras plaid, blue gym Bloomers.
Short shorts and Pedal Pushers,
two-piece swim suits
home permanent waves.
Dial telephones, TV invented.
Ed Sullivan show – Elvis a star.
Blue Suede Shoes, Heartbreak Hotel
on 45 rpm, played zillions of times.
Driver’s Ed classes,
friend slumber parties
first cigarette.
Becoming a Flutist,
school marching band,
orchestra concerts.
Frisch’s Big Boy
after each football game.
Long telephone chats
scribbled notes passed in class.
Summer sun tanning days.
At night no AC,
finding ways to keep cool.
Life as it was in my teens.
They say “the year of the firsts”
are the worst…
“They” seem to be right,
Though, I have no comparison point… for now
Today. I think I may be slightly numb.
I’d rather be if I’m being honest.
But then,
I feel even more disconnected from you.
Read through our texts last night,
Searching for what I’m not quite sure.
Your guidance no doubt.
Every short line from you,
A reassurance of kinds.
A reminder.
A care.
Words I will
never
receive
again.
Moments…
They have forever ceased.
Frozen.
Still.
Only proof exists within my mind.
Even lightening bugs
Make my head dance
With memories of you…
Or fireflies, as you’d call them.
You admired how I cared about them,
Being so careful as I interfered
With their natural flow.
And you’d brag about that too…
And my vices.
Oh those.
Echo the flaws in you.
I grasped them tightly and
kept your expressions, anxious thoughts,
analytics, and pain for injustice …
Everything.
Everywhere.
Nowhere.
And today, instead of making you breakfast,
giving you gifts, or most importantly pouring my
gratitude for you onto a card that I
I carefully selected,
While dodging all the strangers
in the isle,
Who didn’t get you for their dad…
No. Instead.
I stood with my brother,
And our kids,
By a mound of new growing grass and dirt
When the shell of you lays.
The tears I needed to pour,
Did not.
They were emptied yesterday.
With real thoughts.
For today,
I just need to survive.
i have so many thoughts
& none of them are new
they just clatter
around in my
cranium
rolling around rattling
marbles multicolored
& hefty circling the drain of my
mindseye daily
the shock of them
zapping me into one illusion after
the other all my quickthoughts
haunt me into ways of unloving myself
softly the caress of them so sweet
i almost mistake them for idioms of grandeur
of deep rooted realistic self love
written out before me by my own quivering
hand
The heat hangs heavy
Like a wet wool blanket
Will this red light ever change?
Finally green
Speed up as much
As the other cars allow
The wind feels cool
On the back of my neck
A false sense of relief
Gotta keep moving
Miles and miles to go
Hoping for a little respite at sundown
And praying for rain
We left sailors in Bergen disappointed,
took the bus on roads that wound,
shaped like the space between
the restless sea and rising cliffs.
Next, a wave-rocked boat-ride up the fjord,
thanks to a farmer really named Jon Brun,
then a hike back to the seashore overlook
on a path along the table-top mountain.
Rock and sparse grass beneath us,
we sat on the edge, between worlds,
mountains marching to the clouds,
water rolling to define the flat horizon.
Giggled. Held hands. Called our names
to wonder when they echoed together.
Whispered our secrets though alone,
declared our love and happiness as one.
Terrified of falling, of life and of death,
I sat there because you were with me,
tiny me on the map of new universes,
making me feel safer than ever before.
(after the 1927 illustration, by Maxfield Parrish)
Child sits
in the circle
of his father’s curled arm
two faces
watching everything
from high up above
smiles
beaming boisterously
back and forth and far beyond
like those candid shots
and photographs
that hold more truth
than preformed thought
young and aging
mirrored want
colliding spans of space and time
third child
hanging
tightly on
to a moment
that almost never was.
