THE LONGER FARTHER

The poem that got him into heaven
with apologies to Whitman, I think.
It spoke of a desert watering hole
all God's creatures crying
the same way, a manzanita bush.
He must have eye watered while 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:
Lili Marlene, the frozen toes of 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 grader in microfiche.

III

This is the time 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 shirt front, she 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

He kept the nuts and bolts out back,
jar lids screwed to the bottoms of cupboards,
nailed the latch back into place on the back door
which was broken from the banging.
He fixed the washer with his specs
perched low on his nose,
his eyes peeking over them and shining.

V

Right there above his protruding celtic brow
was a perfect hole - a focal point
and in his casket
I noticed it was as it always was.
The snapshot of his dead body is in the album.

VI

She came for a spell to sit at the dinner table
tell stories with certain embellishments.
His mother had an ax to grind:
grandpa's mistress out in the valley,
some other children named the Driggers, distant cousins.
How mean grandma got over that.
She liked to hit us with her crutch
and loved to play solitaire on the side
of her bed before a nap.
It is strange how long one can remember, how details
hidden come to the forefront in Riyadh,
long distance sisterhood and her swollen ankles
aching 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 he said. Driving isn't
always easy on Laundry Hill but you are okay.
The new brougham crushed from fender to rear.
It was all a daughter ever wanted to hear,
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,
it was the only time he ever openly
acknowledged the Almighty.
He had that kind of self confidence you get
from fighting in a war, a monotheist of sorts
who knew the value of keeping quiet.


VIII

We were in the lumber yard,
I was holding a grape Nehi,
while Red added up the total
for two by fours and four by fours.
We tooled around town like that for a couple years
when he was sober and 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 took me everywhere to wait at counters,
fidget and just sit in the front seat.
He'd take a hit of oxygen between corners.
Sometimes I held a hammer or a jar of nails
taken from the washroom.

Then it all changed. He made
one last stand, hero no more.

My father 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:

born 1983 - died 1914

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