June 16, 2019A Partial Explanation of My Father and of Myself for My Eighteen-Month-Old Daughter
I spent far too many years learning him
without learning,
trying to gauge the man
in the language of clenched fist
and midnight prayer; my father
was a broken man,
who went to sleep most nights
before the sun went down
and sometimes he woke
to curse my mother and kick her
out of bed, to call her fat—slut,
cow, bitch—and punch her places
where the bruises wouldn’t show.
I never escaped the angers
of that house or the strange
deep sadness of my father,
who only showed his true face
in our home. I never write
about this because what’s
the point. There was goodness
in him too, but as I aged
I inherited his angers
and channeled them back
at him and at myself
until the cancer came
and his frail body brooked me
back to some brief repose.
Now that he’s gone,
I still struggle to see the best
in him. Today, my girl,
I took you to a gazebo
where an old church bell
has been mounted
on a stand. It no longer rings
unless you slap it
with the flat of your palm.
I hold you up to it
and let you loose its song,
which you do with both hands
flapping like two beautiful
lily little swanlings
about to take flight,
the way my hands took flight
when my father
used to lift me up
to punch the speedbag
in our basement,
back before I knew
the world as anything
but sunlight on gravel
and a wagon pulled
by sparrows. Dear girl,
may I shield you
from as many aches
as I am able, may you
know me as the hands
that held you up
to set the bronze
to singing along
the avenues.
from Poets Respond