“Sometimes, in times of trouble,
              when you’re out of hand and your muddy bubbles
              roll across my floor…”

                                     – River in the Rain, Roger Miller

You used to hold my hand while we drove
back roads in Rowan County, convertible flung back
so the sky seemed black sea, susurrus of stars
swimming, spinning, cool breeze in the summer
stirred by voices—our voices—in harmony,
you rising to higher registers, your tenor
to the baritone of my changing chords, a chorus
half lost in the rushing wind of the drive,

your hand on top of mine, near the gearshift,
a father unafraid of conventions of masculinity.

You were married to my mother, until you weren’t,
married to that local redhead, until you weren’t,
booted between jobs, living in a trailer park
at the edge of campus, til you weren’t,
meeting your soulmate, at the end,
until you weren’t
with us anymore–

but loved by so many.  Always, loved
by so many.  A struggling husband,
but a beautiful, beautiful father.

My voice cracking, then and now, I tried
to provide the bass.  So small
and tremulous beneath the strength
of your church choir, decades-of-radio
voice.  A legacy.  Man with the golden voice,
they called you, and you sang the harmony,
Huck’s positive wonder, while I was Jim,
an odd reality, I realize, given their ages
and experience, given their difference
in registers.  You the father, me the son,
reversal of roles, it seemed, so much
of my adolescence, as you struggled
to stay afloat.

And now, the sun is high in the summer,
heat like hot lead weight across my shoulders,
but I wake to wander to the patio and the laptop,
to recount those moments (was it once?  Was it
a number of times—I can’t remember, but it is
too easy to create, to characterize, the entirety
of our relationship in that one image)—

you with your hands on the wheel, wind
in your silver hair, like Chet Baker
in Let’s Get Lost, so young (then and when
you left us for other realms beyond

this coil—winding your way away somewhere,
like that river they sang about, we sang about,
a life and a world twisting
to an unseen sea, 

a father, then, and I the father, now, again
on this picaresque journey
wondering who I am beside
the love of my children.