My father is a good man (or if your father is
dead) my father was a good man.
–MMPI
In his story, it
was the bloat of the body that silenced my father
to see a boy he
did not know
but dove to find
a meter beneath the waxed light
of lake water,
and rose up with him on his shoulder
and laid him in
the boat, and brought him home.
He was alone
with us, years from there
and on the water
too,
with us staring
on as that part of his past passed forward.
~
I am bothered by an upset
stomach several times a week.
At times I feel like
swearing. I find it hard to keep my mind
on a task or job. My soul
sometimes leaves my body.
The
questions drown the sense out of themselves.
In
relation to yes, to no, there’s no telling. It is
eighty-two
degrees. Yes, it’s raining. Yes, I am here.
~
There is light
slanting in from under the door. There is light
and no voice
from the window. There is light from under
the door and no
voice but hers. My wife
lies across the
bed and waits for me but does not stare.
There’s time for
everything, I’ve been told.
~
In her story, I
am trouble, and my mother knows it.
The doctor
hastens to add, this one may be too much.
Your daughter is
healthy.
Consent and
everything else
are reserved for
another day. During the drive home
my mother is
alone and stopped at a train crossing
and cannot quit
crying. There are no passengers
but coal and
lumber, then slate. The train is miles long
and seeming to
grow. Soon, I am four and have not yet spoken.
~
At times my thoughts have
raced ahead faster than I could speak them.
Truth
and time both have the same problem. During
the past
few years I have been well
most of the time. If a train had not left
Central
at ten a.m. and another had not left
at
eleven, and if these trains had not passed each other
at
the crossing that my mother sat before
and
had she not seen each rocking the wake of the other
in
their tracks, would she have believed her body
to
be like those tracks, and her children the lives intersecting
across
them before her there, both as fast as they could
away
from the other and both from her forever?
~
In
the story of the boy in the water, the boy was put in the earth
before
too long, and my father did not attend the service
or
was not invited. For who would wish to meet the man
who
confirmed the fear of a son drowning himself? And so
most
of the memory ended there, but held him, and hollowed into us
for
awhile, and we all sat silently. The sun set behind the house.
The
patio grayed and grew dark with us, and soon we were blind
to
each other, even as he rose for bed without speaking.
~
Once a week or oftener I
become very excited. I believe my sins are
unpardonable. My wife moves about upstairs.
I remain
below
long enough to hear her feet leave the floor
to
the bed. I have very few fears compared to my friends.
I almost never dream. Maybe another day, I know
she’s thinking,
it will
take. It will. And then. Sometimes my
voice leaves me
or changes, even though I
have no cold.
Already she has knitted
five
sweaters in miniature, of varying colors, one with a hood.
They
hang in the hall closet before the door. The dog turns
circles
lying down and sighs. At times I hear so
well it bothers me.
It
is not winter, but cold comes so thoroughly into the room
that
I shiver. I enjoy gambling for small
stakes.
~
Should
I kneel at the crib with my hands over our daughter’s ears
so
she can dream and wake and drift into dream again
without
incessant murmurs all around? Will she wait to suffer seizure
tremor,
or the barking of her name from an empty stairwell
and
continue on unbaited? Will she say, I
would like to be a nurse,
and
then taking up the tones that I have given, I
have not lived
the right kind of life? In the morning there is a shudder. Lord
do
not let it be so. Father, do not let it be so. Have mercy.
Intercede
for us. For I am foolish and troubled by my dreams.