Father’s Day, 2012

 

I perch on an eighteen-wheeler’s hood, my dad at my side.

I am your blue-eyed daughter, the third of four.

It’s 1955, and most days, you ride the pike for the A & P

hauling fresh fryers and smoked picnics,

listening to “Maybellene,” and shaking your head

at someone named Elvis who’s causing a frenzy

down in Shreveport. But today, you’re with me,

and when you put your arm around me,

it’s like you’ve never, ever been away.

Back home, my sisters and I watch

The Lone Ranger on a black and white RCA.

For Christmas this year you set up a Lionel locomotive

on a track that runs around the tree we’d trudged

through boot-deep snow to  find. We watched you

chop it down and drag it home. Later,

we piled tinsel on its fir boughs and gazed

at our reflections in the dangling gold balls.

By 1964, six Christmas stockings stuffed with oranges and filberts

line the living room couch in a brand-new home you built

on the other side of town—the only one in the whole neighborhood

with an in-ground pool. There’s a big back yard with a field beyond for baseball,

a grove of pine trees to climb and an apple orchard to roam—

Exactly the right kind of place for raising daughters and sons, you say.

On crisp September evenings, we run with our brothers

to roast marshmallows with friends over maple-leaf bonfires.

Come December, we crack the whip on a nearby pond

and ski down our next-door neighbor’s lawn—a ten-second descent

and a ten-minute climb back up—over and over in the winter darkness.

When spring returns, the woods beckon, and we race

through wildflower meadows and turn fallen elms into dragons

we ride with stick swords held high. Bull frogs sing throaty songs

and fireflies light the way home in a world that always, always feels safe.

Perhaps, this is your greatest gift to each of us—

the feeling of being suspended softly in this wide world.

Like the great horned owl, you provided for each of us,

created a world where each day opened before us

without fear, where need was met and comfort created.

So to my father on this Father’s Day, I say thank you—

for your loving presence even in the midst of absence,

for your unwavering belief in the potential in all of us,

for your gentle and loving spirit. Like a well spring,

I carry it with me, always.