Our Fathers

Will there be any good men left once our fathers have gone on,
with their calloused hands and faded eyes
and love that swells up like water behind a levee,
to the point where it overflows, leaving the surrounding landscape forever changed.
Men who show their emotion by putting dinner on the table,
clothes on the body and a roof over head.
Will there be another man like my father?
Could I be a man like my father?
I look in the mirror, weigh and evaluate.
I am not that man who never blinked before he pulled the trigger
but I have just as much love
only mine sits a little closer to the surface.

Integrity: I wonder if we will only read about the word
in books about our fathers
or if one of us will wear the word
tattooed on our sleeve for all the world to see.

I hope one day I can love like my father,
that I can look my children in the eyes
and remain silent with them knowing all the love
that is being shared without being spoken.

Childhood Places

Muddy water and children's laughter;
a true creek never runs deeper
than the bare feet that wade from bank to bank.
Caney Creek was my home.
It was wild, wild in the way
only a place with no adults can be.

I have heard it said we lose something
as we abandon our childhood fancy
for, what seems, a natural progression into adult responsibilities.
No one can every put a finger on what it is that was lost.
If I know anything, I know we lose those places
that were our childhood.
Because they are as much a part of us
as we are of them.
They come to us in dreams
and the echoes of our laughter
still resonate in their living rock.

Places like the creek I mentioned
or patches of woods where we could scream, cry and laugh
without embarrassment or explanation.

We have so few of those places as we get older,
places where we can be ourselves naturally and without explanation.
Too many things have to have a reason, a motive.

Seldom can we find a moment to just be and be left alone.

We take things like yoga; where we can breath and stand funny.
But, because it has a name and a following it is acceptable.
We find places like bars; where we have excuses and God forbid,
reasons.
I'm so tired of having a reason.
A reason to laugh, a reason to smile.
A reason to cry or dance or scream.

We have lost our childhood places.

I remember where all of mine are, though I seldom visit.
Whether it is out of fear, fear that I won't feel the same.
Fear that I have forgotten how to get to that place inside myself.
I am everything and everyone that I have ever been.
It is all still wrapped up somewhere inside of me,
tucked neatly behind a pile of responsibilities and conditioned responses.

Perhaps going back to those places will shake it loose
and I will drink muddy water without wondering if I'll get sick,
I'll strip off all of my clothes and not question if I'm doing something wrong.
It is a far greater wrong to stifle your spirit
than to confound on onlooker.
And much better we confound others with our actions
than to not act and ourselves be confounded.

The Gray Ghost

I often think of my family, the sprawling branches that reach out to obscurity. Some I remember through the eyes of a child. I see them as they were when we were all a little younger and before so many of the good ones lay down for the last time. In my family it was my Great-grand Mother that held everyone together. She raised several generations by rubbing to nickels together to make a quarter. She left us almost ten years ago and since then we have lost others as well. But that is life. We come and we go. Some with a bang and others like a whisper.

My uncle is digging a hole in the Smokehouse
where the floor has rotted away.
He says its going to be a cellar, or a basement,
a place to keep things
like broken farm equipment
and pieces of his memory.
He is always starting projects like this now,
since my great-grandmother went on to rest atop the hill.
It is an attempt to keep the hands busy.
At seventy-three, with no one to share a life with,
it is important for the hands to work.
It is important to keep his mind from wandering too far back,
back to a time when she was still here.
Back when all he had to do was chop wood
and make sure the eggs were gathered in time for breakfast.

All the family makes fun of the way he copes with life,
mostly behind his back.
It is therapy, what he is doing.
It is the only kind of therapy we know.

As a blood-rule our family does not express emotions.
We understand all of us have them;
the grief, sense of loss, heartache
and those feelings that are too complex to have a name.

His intentions are honest
though they may not always be practical.
He is thinking,
thinking of ways his hands can work.

The garden is tilled, the seeds are sewn.
Rain has come and washed his work away
as is the nature of rain.
But he will do it all over again tomorrow,
to keep his hands busy and the heartache
at least six feet in the ground.