In a sense it’s always winter
in this wooded county of our psyche,
where my father and I build a house,
the rest of the crew off drunk somewhere.
The contractor has taken blueprints
and a cash advance to Reno.
A white sky pays out
kernels of snow. My father saws.
I nail. Partitions take ghostly shape.
In the forest of our days, coyotes
eat bread crumbs we scattered
to find our way back to where we left for work.
We lift walls into iron wind,
and brace. Ropes of snot come out
of our noses. Sierra cold’s meticulous.
It polishes our eyeballs like a monocled jeweler.
Hey, come out of death
and follow me, father,
back to my childhood,
where you must work
and hunt and drink
less and spend
time next to me,
being there a father,
talking to me kindly,
listening to my words,
being there a father.
Two hours before dawn your eyes open
and you tiptoe across cold linoleum
to check the thermometer outside: the thin,
red capillary’s clipped down to thirty-one.
After breakfast you glance at your father’s garden:
it’s going underground: carrots and a few potatoes
duck the frost. After last night’s freezing, leaves
of tomato vines curl and harden like arthritic hands.
From the kitchen in late afternoon, you watch
your father in his dying garden, oak boughs already
yellowing. They toss all around him in northerly gusts.
He patiently surveys the damage.
When you see his cotton shirt pulled taut across his back
as he stoops to pull a carrot, you try to steel yourself
against a quickened fear—perhaps
Mom’s goal was to graduate college
but dad’s goal was mom.
Sleep, my love, your way of dream
By the fireflies shall be lighted,
That I gather from the heart of night.
Your father is off, good night,
To buy the honey from the stars :
The city of stars is away a hundred miles.
But by the dawn he will return,
Riding on the horses of the dews,
For you, with a drum as big as the sun
In wintertime I have such fun
When I play quoits with father.
I beat him almost every game.
He never seems to bother.
He looks at mother and just smiles.
All this seems strange to me,
For when he plays with grown-up folks,
He beats them easily.
When supper time is almost come,
But not quite here, I cannot wait,
And so I take my china mug
And go down by the milking gate.
The cow is always eating shucks
And spilling off the little silk.
Her purple eyes are big and soft--
She always smells like milk.
And Father takes my mug from me,
And then he makes the stream come out.
I see it going in my mug
And foaming all about.
And when it's piling very high,
And when some little streams commence
To run and drip along the sides,
He hands it to me through the fence.
We put more coal on the big red fire,
And while we are waiting for dinner to cook,
Our father comes and tells us about
A story that he has read in a book.
And Charles and Will and Dick and I
And all of us but Clarence are there.
And some of us sit on Father's legs,
But one has to sit on the little red chair.
And when we are sitting very still,
He sings us a song or tells a piece;
He sings Dan Tucker Went to Town,
Or he tells us about the golden fleece.
He tells about the golden wool,
And some of it is about a boy
Named Jason, and about a ship,
And some is about a town called Troy.
Listen, children:
Your father is dead.
From his old coats
I'll make you little jackets;
I'll make you little trousers
From his old pants.
There'll be in his pockets
Things he used to put there,
Keys and pennies
Covered with tobacco;
Dan shall have the pennies
To save in his bank;
Anne shall have the keys
To make a pretty noise with.
Life must go on,
And the dead be forgotten;
When I get a child,
I get him with fixed intent;
I don't get him by accident.
I get him because I am content with life,
Satisfied with myself,
And because I love my wife.
When the child is born,
I am full of scorn
At thought of other children.
By instinct I divine
There never was so fine a boy as mine.
I think this, because I am satisfied with life,
Conceited with myself,
And because I love my wife.
And I want to keep my son,
I want to finish what I have begun.
In this woman, whose business it is to prepare my dinner,
I find the most surprising sensitiveness to works of art,
With splendid qualities of sympathy and heart,
And now I learn her father was a sinner.
His lines were laid in unadventurous places;
He was a tradesman in a little town.
But whiles, he laid the yardstick down
And went and lost his money at the races.
The draper had his quiver very full:
At the thought of his thriftlessness my heart should harden.
But had he lived and died like a churchwarden,
I know my housekeeper had been dull.