This poem was written about a month after my father died. It was written before "Crappy Dry Tee Shirts" but while that later poem is about the funeral and the sense of time's dislocation around it, this one is more broadly about processing the grief through a hazy sort of stack of memroies. This poem took a while to write, because I had to make sure it summed it up right. And I think it does. Goodbye, old man...
I will not critique myself for writing about the death of loved one, but there is the issue that it mostly recoups the same imagery as Summer Bamaland. In some ways it feels almost like a retelling of that poem through the lens of grief. This is stronger overal poem, though.
Dirtroad, Alabama catches fire in the sunset and Pours dust down the road. The dry smell of this long drawn summer, With all its clearcuts and brown kudzu And rusty wire, With its catfish and brown water ponds Behind the old pine trees, With all its empty and its old ghost tales Down in the cast iron cemetery. Percolating coffee, Cracked linoleum, That old family photograph, false Sepia due to age and smoke and redclay... These idols breathe too, Also watch the old, tired blue sky; Also watch a boy's first Brush with death, His first intimation of God and the Holy Of Holies, the great other side: Roadkill or a dead bird on a powerline. A dead dog maybe, The old cicada shell in the old bay tree, Still and cracked like a roperot tire swing. Watch his first knowing of Hell In a thunderstorm against the Evening time, grey and black and Such horrible heat and sound. Like fleas On the earth, abandoned to the screams Of clay. Forsaken things. Watching him afraid to be a man, Watching him terrified they will find Out. Watching him laugh, knowing the fake, The masks. Knowing the God's honest truth. Rough hewn pecan trees grow, The cypress roots, The water oak with its large knot and its ivy Laugh, the willows hang, Quiet old women of the swamp. Watch him poor into shape, watch him Chew on the edges of life, Watch him vine the cliff, climb Sand and footsteps. Lights flash in their leaves, Mystic things from some lost age When old nails were a cure, when widdershins Kept the dark at bay, When you counted your fate by crows. These idols too decorated the Temples of his youth. Watch him say goodbye in such a way That it rhymes with the whisper of a sigh, And none of them said much of anything. His first brush with distances is how far Home is. His first brush with making it right Was not being able. Why is a four letter word, and they watch it like They watch many things. Why is a four letter Word. Why is an idle thing.
Dirtroad, Alabama catches fire in the sunset and Pours dust down the road, The dried out smell of missed summer is Open to possibilities, with all its clearcut trees And rusty wire deeds, Fenced in and immaculately empty, Breathing up the hazy blue sea of sky Where a boy's First brush with death Was a roadkill one afternoon, Possum or squirrel, Dog as pet or dog as pest, Red and grey, like that first knowing of hell As a thunderstorm in the Evening time to release the built up tension Of the noon day heat. Those clouds were God's angry thoughts, and thunderbolts And lightning crashes were the clicking teeth of Six-legged deities, run amok like locusts, Feeding on the green of leaves. And fear was not being man enough To do it right. And fear was not being man enough To even be comforted by One's own ability to hide. Pecan and pine and oaks and old hanging maples, Willows and dogwood and peach and logs, The waves and incantations of passing stones Down, hand over hand, into the rivers that Are mostly streams, across memories That are mostly nightmares and mostly dreams. Saying goodbye rhymes with the whisper of a sigh, 'Cause none of them enunciated much of anything. His first brush with loud was a rule accidentally broken. His first brush with silence was knowing His father loved him. And his first brush with distances is how far Home is When he found himself thirty years on Down the street. Paved roads and old sand paths meet. Lighted up to cover the milky-way night. Lighted up to make shadows deep in the brush. Why is a four letter word, and he knows it like He knows many things. Why is a four letter Word. Why is absolutely nothing.