Requiem for The Bear

He made the mistake that all fathers make: he was born human. He had work to do, wars to fight, didn't know what I needed him to know. He loved cars, so I went whole hog into bicycles. He was a spit and polish military man, crew-cut and rigid. I went to the university, grew my hair, and fell into a vortex of confusion and indecision. I was Hamlet playing off of his Fortinbras. He radiated life force in a blinding dose, like a siren, and drew people to him. He acted before thinking things through. I pressed the pause button and never turned it off. He was a big fish in small pond, City Council, School Board, Norwegian Dancers, fancy cars. I shopped at Goodwill and blended into the background. He marched to war. I marched to survival gatherings. We were both addicted to sex. He wore shoes that did not fit because they were a good deal. I spent two weeks wages on cycling shoes made of Italian leather. He drank hot water. I drown in coffee. More than anything he loved his family, immediate and extended. I ran away from familiars and craved solitude. We found common ground on skis, hiking Long's Peak. I wake to being human and make the mistakes that all fathers make. I accept what he was able to give, what he had to withhold. I wish he were here to tell how full I have become because of him and all he could and could not say. I inherit his demons and keep them close to my own blind and stumbling secrets. 

Snow

It's the first day with no parent. Orphaned at sixty. Such a thing to be alone in this world, with no one to displease anymore. For so long I wanted to fail out of spite, to prove how wrong they had been by tripping over my own shoe laces. But there is no longer anyone to underwhelm with my defects. Only snow, vast expanses of blinding, white stretches of corn stubble and naked oak trees. The last of my parents, Norm, The Bear, is gone, and he leaves a yawning hole in my psyche. With no one to push against, I am suddenly devoid of purpose, or, rather, free to fulfill my own purpose, robbed now of excuses. I know it is bad form to blame one's parents after the age of twenty-five or so, but I have been a slow learner. I admit it. I'm pretty fucked up. But that is only part of the story. The rest of the story is the terrifying emptiness racing away in all directions. I can forgive them now, have to begin the process of forgiving myself, petulant son I have been. The world is frozen, expectant. The chill is a cold slap, a cold, but welcome slap.

When Death Comes

Dedicated to my father, Norm, The Bear, and his surrender to a life of love. He would have wanted it this way for me.  

When death comes, may it open my heart to the life that was. May it find in me a peace that comes from having given so much that I lost everything to a world in need. When death comes, I hope it finds me used-up, spent, bereft of material trappings, but filthy rich in stories of unreasonable risks, audacious generosity, and leaps off of cliffs into freezing pools. May I be found guilty of having said "I love you" too often. When death comes, may my body be bent from having walked too many miles, been in too many bike crashes. May my face be tanned and wind burned. May my friends get drunk and fall into bed with each other. When death comes, I hope it finds something beautiful that I left behind, something that makes children think, laugh, and cry with tears of understanding. May the words I spoke ring true for years after I am gone. May the love I gave lift my ashes and spread them over the hungry mountains.

Paradise

Now, before the sun rises, the breath comes easy and the heart is at peace. It knows what it wants. The day sits, alert, waiting to be composed, listening for the incantation. The cat stretches. An owl perches nearby. Everything is possible. Pull out your brush. Paint the day in the colors you have imagined in the cold obscurity of night. One stroke at a time. Patience. Care. A devotion to mastery. You practice. You are fearless, unrelenting, possessed. Eros burns, flesh and bone are lit by the electricity of longing.  That sweet hunger guides the muscles to bring the dream to canvas. You carry the pulsing desire from deep inside and smuggle it across the threshold between you and the beloved. With each pulse, the blood drives you forward. Do not be afraid. More than anything, you want to act from love. And you must. You will be carried into the day by light that is born of darkness, lit by a listening heart. All that it needs is for you to remember and to swing your legs out of sleep and into a day swollen with the ache of want. It waits, ripe, engorged, for you, the lover.

Immutable

A coyote met me in the yard this morning. He crossed in front of me with only a glance in my direction and what I took to be a sardonic grin as he slipped behind the curtain of creosote that is the border of wild desert. His was not the leash of the pet, nor the deference of domestication. He had no jacket to keep off the chill of December. He colored outside the lines of highways and borders of behavior. How he lived immersed in a city I have no idea. The sight of him stirred something sleeping in me. That part wanted to drop my book bag and follow him into the scrub of survival in the desert. I envied how he could live by only the gifts of claw, fur, and wit. He, I felt, was closer to God than I: no barriers of comfort or complacency. No matter how ravenous the hungry ghost of want, it will never taste freedom the way a lean coyote does. Coyote descendants will still be wandering here long after the towers of pride have collapsed in ruin. The thought gave me comfort as I dialed up the heat in a car running on the rot of trees long dead, of life on its way to the next big thing.

Thoughts on a Dying Father

I won't whitewash it. He was a hard father to have in many ways, and we clashed. Sparks flew. We threw punches at each other more than once. He had his hands full with me, and I simmered with rage at him for years. Spit and polish did their best to keep war demons at bay. He was rigid in his rules and harsh with consequences. One time I defied his order that I wash the car. He shaved my head. I was in seventh grade. Everybody had long hair. My girlfriend dumped me. He was also generous to a fault and loving beyond measure. His best friend was a black officer in the sixties. He loved children. He loved to sing. He loved sex and was married twice, six kids of his own and four step children. His biceps were as big as a tree branch. He let me use his credit card when my car broke down in a Montana blizzard. He drove two and a half thousand miles to nurse me when I was crippled and poisoned after a snakebite. He softened and surrendered before he died. We grew close. He wanted me to be more like him then. I am trying.

Undoing

Frost has colored the bike white and it bites my bare hand when I lower it off the hook. It is still dark and I am going for a ride on this first day of December. Fingers already numb punch the buttons that engage the lights front and rear. I need those lights, both to see and to telegraph my presence in the skinny bike lane to drivers still half asleep but speeding along at 50 mph. I don't think about the cold but lean into the climb up to the road. It's what I do. With a laptop and a window of time, I wait for words as I pedal south over the river. The bridge has been sprayed with de-icing solution. Good thing too. I don't want a car fishtailing into the bike lane. I pedal toward the light, the warmth, the prospect of something good in a cup. There I will wait for the words that come from a somewhere I still don't quite know. I will let them undo what has been wound into a knot in my neck, my shoulders, my heart. This must be done before the sun rises and chases away the secrets that crouch in the cold, in the dark. I hold a light that woos them forward, out of shadow.