A Son Does

He extended a thickly muscled leg while offering a hand four times the size of mine to use as a counterweight.

Unbelievably, maybe even miraculously at the time, I let myself trust his bulk enough to begin the climb up the face of his body. I leaned back, perpendicular to his flexing plane of ascent, to get grip from my bare feet and take step after step, from ankle to shin to knee (sorry about stepping so hard on your knee, dad), to thigh, crotch (ouch again), before abdomen (ripped six-pack from days as Golden Glove boxer workouts), to chest, and then, unbelievably, shoulders.

There I stood, king for a moment, on top of everything, almost banging my crew cut against the ceiling, my perspective changed. I looked down on the living room, my mother, my brothers and sisters. I was almost four years old, and he was about to leave for Korea.

Now, over eighty years later, he is the one who walks like a toddler. He is palsied, liver-spotted, exorcised of his Golden Gloves cockiness; he stumbles with words, looks for them when they fail to come. He falls. He wears diapers.

I am not going to lie. I don't look forward to seeing him this way, but I know I must go. The flight I can't really afford has been booked, rental car reserved. Time blocked out.

It's time to go. I am not all of the man I hoped to become. I have been angry at him for what he couldn't give me.

A son has to own his role in falling short of his dreams.

A son has to give up blaming a father for his failures.

A son pockets his anger.

A son lifts the heavy tongue of the wagon that carries his father into his final days. He leans into the weight and forces the the wagon to roll ahead, inevitably.

He may want to quit, to avoid, to cave in to habits too old to forget. But a son shows the father that he can, that it is because of the father that he heaves against the weight, finds peace in the pulling. A funereal pyre and a long rest wait at the end of this final journey.

My father dreams of his father, of the warmth of a barn full of horses, cows, sheep, goats. He smells the manure and it is rich and muted with hay and corn. Outside the wind howls. It's January in northern Minnesota, and the father of my father carries incredible weight with hands four times the size of his son's. He teaches his son to play cribbage to pass the time, to work, to never back down.

My father was a giant, a tree, a mountain, a fighter. He and I fought. I landed a few. He gave me coils of rage that I have yet to untangle.

A son begins the work to untangle. He shows his father that he loved the boy into a man.

A son finds in his father a gift that no grief can ever repay, that no shame can hide.

Cantilever

Space is all there is down there. Hanging over nothing that is. He is what some might call over-extended. Made too many commitments, let his heart sail away on a stiff breeze, spinnaker full, way past the horizon of his control, began a story he has no chance of finishing. He went just a bit too far to return, and now the tether that used to hold him has stretched to the breaking point. One more step, or even a lean against it, and, snap, it's history. The thing he is standing on might not support his substantial weight, though. If that's the case, he's done too. Oh well, it was the best he could do at the time, given the boundaries of his imagination, the blinders he helped put in place. Might as well test the extension to see if and what it gives.

Think It Through

Much as I am loathe to admit it, there are times when you have to think. You have to arrange the chess pieces of your life in a way that includes souls other than your little self and your puny horizons. Doesn't matter if you want it more than anything, are stamping your feet like a spoiled two-year-old in a fling-yourself-to-the-ground-fist-pounding-feet-kicking tantrum. It aint the right thing. You can't quit your job, buy a van, move to Colorado, get a dog, and live on scribbles. Yet anyway. Yes, you are champing at the bit and going nuckin' futts, but take a moment to consider the cost. And a bigger part of you knows it, has to get it, has to think it through. The old saw of the blues song "just because you can doesn't mean you should" bangs around in the crazy hungry cavern of your little skull. The consequences outweigh the bennies. There are irrefutable facts to consider -- sixty effin' years old, crazy as a bedbug, locked into contracts, bills to pay -- to meet face-to-face. You can't really eat like a sparrow and shit like an elephant, or, better yet, the other way around. Truly.

Open Bar

The banquet table was spread with mini chimichangas, stuffed mushrooms, pickled red peppers, a plate of pork tenderloin, and cheeses, lots of cheeses: Havarti, real mozzarella, brie. The plates were tiny though. I could see I would be making many trips. But before the food, I needed one of those cold ones offered at the open bar, staffed by a friendly server with a barbell piercing in her nose. "Anything local?" "Closest is Cali. Lagunitas." She obliged my thirsty eyes. Even provided a frosted glass. Now one might wonder what a yahoo like me is doing at some fancy hotel with an open bar and gourmet hors d'oeuvres. Well it just so happened that I was here to read a poem, a few poems actually. Aloud. To people. Who would have thunk it? The lout from Stoogetown, Wisconsin in front of a bunch of university muckity-mucks reading original verse? Yikes! Miracles can happen. I did include gun powder and pheasant shit in one poem though. The only way forward, in this case, is out the barrel, after all.

Under a Spell

Not unlike a finger in a live light socket, the symptoms snap your attention into the here and now. A fever, pulsing nerves, sleeplessness, and heart in a vise all point to mysteries on the move. You have been hit by the spell, are collateral damage in the cross-hairs of alignment. Soul, brain, body, and something larger have all conspired to set you straight. Problem is now you're good for nothing in this world of money changers and character assassins. So you've got to go it alone until you find your tribe, your kindred. It's a crazy thing, and some will spurn you, will never forgive you. Yes, you are one of the crazies. Welcome home, the home that always changes, riding the wave of life on fire.

Solitude

He and the cat greeted the morning by sleeping in. It was October, finally, and the swamp cooler, failing as it was, took a break after the marathon of summer in the desert. Glorious is the work of the slug-a-bed. But there was more here. He tasted the rare prospect of being at the helm of his day. No honey-doos, no work drudgery, no immediate home crisis. This had to be one of the rarest of rare experiences a human being can have he thought to himself. True, he was limited by money and his lack of fitness, but he was free to get up and do whatever the hell he wanted for maybe the first time in his long, plodding adult life. This was the key, he realized, to finding some of what he had lost over the years. The way, as usual, but now so utterly distinct, was to find a blank sheet of paper and pick up where some part of him,that part that still held a dream, had left off.

Haunted

The first time he saw what he took to be a long-dead ancestor he ignored it. He felt a chill for sure, but the habit, being strong, was to look away and get back to his work of filling in boxes for the Beegkeester Corporation. It was deadening work he had to admit, but not dead as in the apparition that peeked around the corner of his sight just when he grabbed his double latte -- ultra venti -- that served as breakfast. Besides, what the hell could some imagined specter have to do with him making his daily bread? He doubled down and sent off a text to his colleague, Boinker. He included a happy face and a ghost emogi just to defuse the tingle he felt somewhere down there at the base of his spine. But the creepy feeling wouldn't leave him. The eidolon rose from the pixels of his screen, surfaced the bloom of his espresso, made dates in his day planner. It pursued him. In fact it mocked him. The more he ran, the more the phantasm persisted. Avoidance wasn't working. Then, on the way home, driving his new Volkswagen Golf, he met the gaze of his nemesis in the rear view mirror. Rather that avert his gaze, however, this time he examined the eyes from the past that he had buried, hidden from himself, pushed into the shadowy recesses of his psyche. Until you see me, bring me into the light of your little world, they said, I've got you.