Ode to the Longer Farther

The poem that got him into heaven
with apologies to Whitman
spoke of a desert watering hole
all God's creatures, crying the same way
near a flame-red manzanita bush.
He must have eye-watered when he wrote it,
laughed when it was published
in the local rag. He must have laughed.
Not loved either but published finally.
His life story on the front page,
with apologies. Marlene Dietrich,
frozen in Aleutia,
the family part of mining.
Part one concludes.

II

Here is the day he was discharged
honorably from eight years of his life,
a wallet-sized picture of a road grater in microfiche.

III

This is the time when he leapt
like the elk over the Impala at Tonto,
my body waiting below in the gully for transport
between my sister's big breasts under
a Catholic style shirtfront which held me in c-spine.
Those were good times, a father saving a daughter.
A sister to lean on. A hospital to go to.


IV

Back over there he kept the nuts and bolts.
Jar lids screwed to the bottoms of cupboards,
nailed the latch back into place
on the back door broken from the banging.
He fixed the washer with his specs on,
perched low on his nose
his eyes peeking over them.
Spuds were for dinner.

V

Right there above his long celtic brow
was a hole that was too small to be a bullet
but it was a bull's eye and in his casket
I noticed it still. As large as ever.
The snapshot is in the special album,
the one that makes me cry,
his hair had never grayed
but his beard made us call him Ahab.

VI

She came over for a spell to sit at the dinner table
tell stories with certain embellishments.
The one where his mother had an ax to grind,
grandpa's mistress out in the valley, some other children
we are related to, the Driggers, distant cousins.
How mean grandma got over that. How she wielded that crutch.
It is strange how long one can remember, how details
hidden come to the forefront in Riyadh,
long distance sisterhood and her swollen ankles
hurting from the flight. It matters
because I never knew.

VII

Just a piece of metal, a broken one now
but you are okay, you are okay. Driving isn't
always easy on Laundry Hill but you are okay.
The new brougham wholly dented fender to rear.
It was all a daughter ever wanted to hear, and
caught me a little off guard. Mom advised,
you've got to tell your father, not me.
It'll be good for the both of you.
I think it was our only conversation
because he saved up the rest of his talk
for that poem, to get him into heaven,
a certain kind of self confidence you get
from fighting in a war.

VIII

We were in the lumber yard,
I was holding a grape Nehi,
Red was adding up the total,
two by fours and four by fours,
good for killing rabid bats.
We tooled around town like that for a couple years
when he was sober, preparing to die.
Just a pause he was taking between drinks,
about five years of dry wall and fixing the electric,
balancing on ladders, picking stucco out of my eye.
He'd take a hit of oxygen between corners.
Sometimes I held a hammer or a jar of nails
taken from the washroom. Then, I grew up
all of a sudden and he got mean about it.
He decided to drink himself to death
instead of shoot the bastard.
And he did. May 23 to May 23
but they got it backwards at the printers,

b.1982 - d.1913

I've got it here in his mother's jewelry box,
absolute proof. I look at it sometimes
and think about the wars
and how Whitman's mother died
the same day so many years before,
her wars all over and a sun on the rise,
another on the set.

IX

His poem is somewhere else,
yellowed and out of date,
with apologies. I keep writing it,
longer, farther.