My Father’s Singing

He could feel the lack constructing itself for him,

the cavalettis anchoring a tight-rope of life-long

grief, mostly wordless and ineffaceable,

quiet as he stood in the middle of the floor,

almost still, and under his breath an ache

fresh and kept close crumbling in his throat,

the edges of a long minor note in a melancholy song

whose singer was only 32 when she died,

“of cancer,” he told me, like the maternal women

he’d been born to, live recurrent woe, large-handed

in homemade dresses.  He sings, in the voice,

I imagine, because it is so tender, of a grandmother

who died at 36 and might have sung to him

from her grave in New Paris, Ohio

if he could remember that far back,

or even his mother, smoking in the back bedroom,

because she’d given him away but returned

for him twice. “Will you stay with me?” she sings,

the lack constructing a life for him, jagged,

infant scenes resetting his breath spaces in the gulf,

his balance points, stations of practiced repose

in his vagabonage, his lateness, his detachment.

Plain Talk

“Is this one a girl, too?”

    She’s curled into the belly

of the sling, cinched close,

my arm tucked under her round

back, a loaf of bread.

Yes, I say. 

We’ve come in for paper vacuum bags.

And they’ve got belts here, too,

if I know the model of my Hoover,

just in the back,

the two old men who stare,

says the one in the blue folding chair,

our side of the counter.

My older daughter ignores his sweet talk.

She climbs into the front window

to console the cat, dark stolid sweepers

like customers pushed together.

The shop is murky.  He lights up,

grimaces like he never got used

to his eyes burning. 

“Well,” he says,

“you keep trying,” almost trembles.

“I had two girls at first, too,” he says,

when it strikes me how we share

a loss, and all at once—

how some love can be brutal—

I know his family: 

You’ve got to have boarding house reach

to eat around here, mothers say.

The boys devouring their bread,

fathers bent over supper.

“But then,” he assures me,

“my sons were born,” and I remember

the sad, plain talk among men:

girls lose their father’s name.

This is why I want to hold him,

the way he shifts in his seat or rubs

the white stubble on his cheeks,

and take hold of the St. Christopher

I wore at their births—

stepping knee-deep into rushing water,

the saint I saw dangle

from my best friend’s neck,

and always wanted, the house

quiet, when we slept on the floor

by his bed.  I am as good as a woman,

and cradle the girl closer. 

He believes my daughters are good

only for other men’s boys. 

He too must have heard stories

about only sons, and that one day

he’d be strong enough

to kick his old man’s ass—

ten year olds, cupping their crotches

in sleep.  The saint still bright

on his pulse, the radio played 

low until the window grayed,

still a saint, his balance over stones,

still constant, muscled, light

from near to the far bank

and back.  This is why, to countless

descent, women disappear,

slip away into the back hills,

leave daughters with neighbors,

and wander down in trees

looking for water to cross.

Husbands beat their sons

for being like them

while they are still bare

between the legs.