My Father's Back
There's an early memory that I carry around
In my mind
like an old photography in my wallet,
little graying and faded, a picture
That I don't much like
but nonetheless keep,
Fingering it now and then like a sore tooth,
Knowing it there,
not needing to see it anymore....
The sun slants down on the shingled roof.
The wind breathes in the needled pines.
And I am lying in the gra** on my third birthday,
Red-faced and watchful
but not squalling yet,
Not yet rashed or hived up
from eating the wrong food
Or touching the wrong plant,
my father's leaving.
A moment before he was holding me up
Like a new trophy, and I was a toddler
With my face in the clouds,
spinning around
With a head full of stars,
getting so dizzy.
A moment before I was squealing with joy
In the tilt-a-whirl of his arms,
Drifting asleep in the cavern of his chest....
I remember waking up to the twin peaks
Of his shoulders moving away, a shirt clinging
To his ma**ive body,
a mountain receding.
I remember the giant distance between us:
A drop or two rain, a sheen on the lawn,
And then I was sitting up
in the grainy half-light
Of a man walking away from his family.
I don't know why we go over the old hurts
Again and again in our minds, the false starts
And true beginnings
of a world we call the past,
As if it could tell us who we are now,
Or were, or might have been....
It's drizzling.
A car door slams, just once, and he's gone.
Tiny pools of water glisten on the street.
--Edward Hirsch