Category: Family

words of wisdom

“it’s only a paper moon”

no, that’s not what he’d say

“you’ve got to take care
of your family first”

is that it? or maybe

“keep your head down
and get a separate room
at the end of the hall”

it’s not as if all his sayings
were collected in a book
this is a guy, after all,
who was famous for not talking

I wish he were here now
because I’m at the bottom
and can’t figure out what to do
I think he’d be a good one to ask

we used to spend most of our time
talking about big bands
or the latest episode of Lawrence Welk

I remembered all the names of the Welk people
even though, truth be told, I’d only seen the show
a few times

but I always knew I could get him talking
if the subject were Pete Fountain
or the Glen Gray band

he took me to my first concert
Pete Fountain and Al Hirt
at The Shell in Canandaigua

two guys from New Orleans on stage
two guys from Pittsfield, Massachusetts
in the audience, swinging

when I wake up, the first things I see
remind me of him: a purple moon,
a vase of flowers, a Parisian riverside

and out here in the living room
another of his paintings
and a cross-stitch of my first initial

did he ever have a long night when he doubted?
when he couldn’t pay the rent and the food
was running out and it was all too much?

he was from a different era, when men
didn’t talk about those kinds of things
they were just expected to hold up their end

he worked at the same place for 48 years
never took a sick day — not one
my resume looks like the classified ads

in later years I heard some rumblings
he was stubborn, his weapon was silence
and I guess that may have been true

I never saw it, though
he was who I wanted to be
a class act

someone called me that yesterday
“a class act”
but I can’t see it

I’d like to be sitting in the passenger seat
of one of the endless parade of white cars
listening to WYLF (the “music of your life”)

maybe he’s driving me to my clarinet lesson
or he and Grandma are taking me to Burger King
or over to their apartment for dinner

Ring Dings and a block of Velveeta in the fridge
potato-chip chicken and mini cheesecakes
broccoli covered in cheese and Ritz crackers

and that old glass coffee mug with the recipe
for Irish coffee on the side, mostly whiskey
with some coffee to take the curse off it

even though by that time neither of them drank
but they always had liquor in the credenza
in case a mixer broke out / it never did

god what I’d give right now to go over there
to explain all this and how it all happened
and ask him to forgive me and to tell me

“I love you and you’ll be OK”

is that what he’d say?

2 Comments

Listen to this poem using the player above.

/ / /

This is the first poem of the year for me, although it’s the third one to make it to this site in 2011. One note: The person 99% of you know as my father is not the person mentioned in this poem, which refers to my biological father.

Perchance to dream

On the first night in my new apartment —
after fifteen years of sleeping in our bed —
I closed the door to my bedroom,
pushed it tight until the latch clicked home.

On that first night I was a boy again,
waiting for the yellow eyes to appear
around the corner at the end of the hallway
like they had night after night when I was a child.

For years I was afraid of partially opened doors,
preferring to see nothing or to see everything;
to know what fate had in store the moment it
lumbered around the corner, thirsting for me.

Even earlier in childhood I’d had a similar dream.
I was in my bed in my pajamas with the feet on them,
and the door to the hallway was open and I could hear
the footsteps, the heavy pounding on the wooden floor.

One night my mother came through the bedroom window,
snuck in under cover of darkness and spirited me away
from the party going strong in the living room
while my drunk father was supposed to be watching me.

I don’t know when he first discovered I was gone
or what he did next. I like to imagine him in a panic,
searching for me, tearing the house apart, tears on his cheeks —
like he failed to do all those years.

But I’m sure it was nothing so dramatic. Probably a phone call
to my grandparents’ apartment on Main Street.
My grandfather would have picked up the phone in his quiet way.
“Yes, they’re here. They’re sleeping.”

Leave a Comment

Technically, my sister and I are half-siblings. But that’s only true in DNA terms. I wrote this poem for her as her Christmas present. The picture below is of us, just after I read it to her on Christmas morning. I love you, Sis.

half
(for my sister)

that word has no meaning
Watson and Crick might say half
but I love you completely
love isn’t based on a sequence
of nucleotides, on the order of
adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine
love has to account for history
has to factor in changing tables
and wide smiles in baby seats
remember when —
but of course you do, your memory
is better than mine
I’ve been away much longer
than we were together
I’ve missed too much of your life
I don’t know the stories
don’t recognize the names
if it weren’t for photographs
I’d remember even less
and yet you’ve never wavered
never had a harsh word
you’re what everyone hopes for
what I hope for
you’re a gift I’m still unwrapping
a mirror in which a better man is reflected

One Comment

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Apple
(for my mom)

They say the apple
doesn’t fall far
from the tree.

Sometimes
it doesn’t fall
at all.

I am suspended
in the sun,
depending on you.

My skin,
in your image,
reddens.

Inside me
are the seeds
you planted.

The worm seeks an entrance
but I am strong,
as you taught me to be.

My sweetest days
are yet to come.

10 Comments

What I Would Give For What We Had

In Lenox, Massachusetts, on the picturesque corner
of Main and Housatonic Streets,
is a building with walls made of butter-yellow brick.

Looking up from the sidewalk to the second floor,
you can see the windows
through which my family used to see the world.

There was a drop ceiling in the den that gave way
under the weight of rainwater,
dousing my grandfather as he removed a sodden panel,

standing on a chair to get a better grip, while lightning
lit the windows of the pharmacy below.
There is a shop that sells art photos and gourmet chocolate

where the garage used to be. “Home again, home again
jiggety jig,” my grandmother would say
every time. Back when she used to ride in the car, back when

she used to have places to go. I am so old I can remember her
driving herself, the modern woman, cigarette
fashionably cradled by elegant fingers, red nails catching

the sun that elsewhere lit trees on our famous hills.
It was only in the leaving that I realized
the loss, only in the black-and-white grandeur of deco

living rooms and dancing at the Crystal Ballroom.
Now I would trade anything for that place,
that time, those days when a street corner was the world
and all I knew was safe and protected within it.

One Comment

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Another poem for my wife.

The Oak Tree
(for Jennifer)

I had already asked you three times
you’d wisely declined
I was too young, too unproven
played the saxophone in a latin jazz band
you repaired houses for the poor
we each made barely enough to pay the rent

the fourth time was under an oak tree
at your mother’s house
you finally agreed, throwing caution
to the Pennsylvania wind
we were back East on a rare trip
to see our families, to display one another

that tree had been there for years and years
since the fields next to the dairy farm
were turned into a housing development
for upwardly mobile college professors
whose daughters spoke two languages
and traveled the world on the way to good lives

no one thought we’d last
they all said I was too young, too unproven
played the saxophone in a latin jazz band
couldn’t provide for you
all those beautiful 1950s sentiments
born of monochrome evenings with the Cleavers

but under that oak tree —
a sign of stability, of permanence —
you agreed to place a bet on the long shot
I held your hands as a stray leaf fell,
like your resistance, to rest
in the lush green grass behind the houses

after you said yes
we traveled north to my parents’ house
my mother gave me a wedding ring
that had been her grandmother’s
granting us her blessing
even though she doubted our future

the oak tree is gone now,
cut down by your mother
all these years I’d thought she hated what it represented
only found out this week that it was damaged
in an ice storm and had to be cut before it fell
so many things misunderstood

6 Comments

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Red Truck Elegy

Dozer, the beefy black lab, wants into the car
he sniffs the air, scenting my son’s watermelon lollipop

just a few feet away sits our red truck, silent, flashers on
a gift from my dad, it’s different from the red truck

my wife and her baseball team would cram into the bed of
back in Oregon, after the game, going to get ice cream

this red truck is smaller, though it’s hauled its share of wood
the bottom is rusted, looking like something you should

discover with a submarine while searching the ocean floor
I performed my only successful automotive surgery on this truck

using the last wire coat hanger in the world to wire up
the muffler and tailpipe, which were grinding against the axle

my dad couldn’t have done much better, because he
doesn’t know anything about cars or trucks either, despite

being much better versed in practical things than I am
and more comfortable with getting his hands dirty

John flits around the garage, moving from mechanic to Dozer
to the two lazy German shepherds who lie at the feet

of an elderly couple on the garage’s only two chairs
eating submarine sandwiches and adding to the local flavor

if the truck is dead, we’ve decided not to resuscitate it
we’ll just cut the cord that anchors it to us and let it sink into memory

captured in the occasional photograph, just like its bigger brother
with my father-in-law’s head poking into the flower-packed bed

I’ve heard enough stories about that truck that it looms in my created past
almost as large as he does, gone just after I met him, gone too soon

this truck, though, was here just long enough to carry us to the top of the hill
and now we’ll walk down the other side on our own

One Comment

Listen to this poem using the player above.

A poem for my son John and his grandfather, after whom he was named. John Packard died in April 1996.

John, again
(for my younger son and his grandfather)

he’ll never smell his grandpa’s pipe
never hear him laugh or make a corny joke
he’ll never feel the rumble of the BCS
as it plows up the rich earth for planting
he’ll never sit at the oval table
never pass a bowl of fresh-picked veggies
or watch his grandpa butter warm bread
he’ll never be tickled by a mustache
or smell the sweat on an old t-shirt
never be picked up in a wiry embrace
or put his cheek against rough stubble
but he’ll carry with him the joy in the land
and he’ll walk with solid steps on country lanes
he’ll laugh when laughter is needed
and he’ll stop to help a stranger
he’ll see in his mother’s eyes
the eyes whose gaze he’ll never feel
and he’ll know what it is to be loved

5 Comments

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Origins

Tell me where you’re from

from the Berkshire hills
from a yellow-brick building
with a drug store in the bottom
from a mother and a father
who gave me love and madness
from firefighters in a flooded basement
and old men with missing fingers
from the daddy longlegs, north-pointing
and the tobacco-scented southern earth
from industrial towns in upstate New York
and the blue-carpeted van
from this school and this one and this one, too
always new, always being introduced
from the haven of my room and
from dreams of the ocean
from dinosaur bones and long words
and pretty girls with the same first name
from 27 houses and apartments
in too many towns and cities
from first cars and first kisses
and second chances and third strikes
from the Irish and the German
from the 17th-century seafarers
from the town cowherd and
a documentation analyst
from a radio host and a typesetter
and the receptionist at England Brothers
from drunks and crazy women
who shouted at busts of Wagner
from the laundress and the waitress
and the jailed superintendent
from fire-red Mustang convertibles
and tickling under the dining room table
from submarines and Thailand
and the Housatonic River
from scalding sauce and icy water
and bandages and tears
from desert sands and bald tires
and cheese crackers and Wendy’s
from Chapel Hill to Lexington
Amarillo to Tucson
from the foothills to the mountains
to a backyard filled with stones
from a Big Wheel to a bicycle
to too many unknown homes
from the saxophone to the microphone
to the studio to the stage
from Citalopram and therapy
depression, bliss and rage
from messy rooms and folded laundry
from turn that down and crank it up
from countless hours of talking
and countless talking of ours
from Furukawa to Yokohama
from Catholicism to Methodism to
atheism to Buddhism to atheism
from selfishness to fatherhood
from one side to the other
from husband, father, lover, cousin,
uncle, friend and brother
from Main and Church, from Plunkett,
Chad Circle and Knapp Road
from Dodge and Tanque Verde
from Aoba-ku and Glendale
from Raymond Street and Kellie Court
from Lenox, Pittsfield, Lanesborough,
Syracuse, Oklahoma City, Rochester,
Potsdam, Hilton Head, Concord,
and more and more and more
from Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter Thompson
and Douglas Adams and Hayden Carruth
and George Lucas and John Williams
and John William Coltrane and Steve Lacy
and Charles Mingus and Paul Desmond
and Nova and Batman and Walt Whitman
and Donald Hall and Albert Goldbarth
and Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac
from doubt and fear
from courage and confession
from harmony and discord
from humor and illness
from long-dormant and active
from diagnosis and treatment
and from all the same places you’re from

so…

Tell me where you’re from

6 Comments