Fathers

Due to being raised in a stepfamily, I have two fathers.

Fathers, in presence and absence both, carve shapes and spaces in the self, glacial in scale.

I have understood more about who my fathers are by feeling into the contours of plateaus, moraines, and perennial lakelets left in my self than by directly observing their particular forces of being.

Both my fathers are sweet in nature, strong in some ways, yielding in others, and elusive of definition. I have a network of underground feelings about both of them, mixtures of sadness, fondness, and betrayal.

What is your experience with fathers?

My invitation to you: explore the topic of fathers in some form. Begin, if you like, with a specific memory of one moment you shared with yours.

My example below - two poems about my stepfather, whom I also write about in places.

Similar invitations: mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, family

~~

Two long stems of lilies.
Carton of milk.
Kohlrabi.
When you have something to say
you stop walking to show me
with your hands the shape of the thing
you are grasping.

Behind the rust iron wall.
Look someone lives there.
A tent of laundry.
Wet shawls and cloths decorate.
Your hand is around a word, look there it is
in the space you make between fingers. The garden is strung
in marionettes, squash and flowers, puppets
a square within the unkempt square.
You have your mind around a word.

II.

Look at it coming down now, you say it's really
coming down now, with a shine
in your rain-gray eyes. The grass bends backwards.

Find the place with the best view of the trees,
storming, tossed, whips of willow rope.
The bay tree, you say, sit in the crown of the bay tree
and wash, I have built steps to the crown of the bay tree
so you can wash, no one can see your body
just your face in the branches. It is a compound,
I have built a compound of modules
the circle of hutches in hexagons
down by the burned out place
where the cabin used to be. 
Look at the rain now, it's really coming down now,
it's pouring. Your rain eyes gray, shining,
the places you have built, in the rain,
wet places built by hand.

~~

Thumbnail image reverently appropriated from The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford Smith