I hate riding in boats,
the way it makes
my body want to turn
inside out, hate the way
my body rocks for hours
after I’m back on land.
But I love the way
my father’s hands
rest on the wheel,
the way his eyes
scan the waves,
the easy slope
of his shoulders.
He’s so himself,
so whole, so someone
who I’m glad to know.
Standing on shore,
I wave at his boat,
as he points it
toward the deep.
He waves back
and smiles
with great love.
There are many
kinds of oceans—
time is one.
I hate the distances
we keep.
Posts Tagged ‘father’
Missing My Dad
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boat, dad, daughter, father, time on April 24, 2021| 2 Comments »
Small Things
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, kindness, small steps on November 25, 2020| 4 Comments »
Small things aren’t just important,
says my father. They’re everything.
And I think of how,
night after night, he’d lie
on his back on the floor
and bench press me
as I stood with one foot
in each of his hands.
Years later, every morning
he’d lift me with a phone call—
This is the Broadmoor. This is your
morning wake up call.
He’d say it in his snootiest,
haughtiest British butler voice.
And years later,
when we hold hands
he rubs his thumb across my thumb,
a small, familiar gesture of love.
Now, wishing I could hold
his hand while we sit
in different rooms together
a thousand miles away,
I can almost feel
the pad of his thumb
move across my knuckles
the way wind moves over water
and creates the weather.
It lifts me.
It’s everything.
On My Father’s 76th Birthday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, dad, daughter, father, love on July 5, 2020| 5 Comments »
Already he’s lived a dozen years longer
than any other man in his bloodline.
One died of malaria. The rest of heart attacks.
Not one of them knew how to show love.
Sometimes a river changes its course—
perhaps slowly, eroding over centuries.
Perhaps all at once in a mighty flush,
as after a flood or an ice-floe.
I want to ask him how change happened in him—
how the impulse toward anger
rechanneled into tenderness,
into patience, into a willingness to be vulnerable.
I want to believe the same might happen for the world—
that by tending our hearts more carefully,
we might jump the banks of what seemed possible.
We are all of us here to be changed.
Lights Out
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, story on June 20, 2020| 5 Comments »
We would be tucked into our twin beds,
and dad would sit in the door way.
Every night, he’d tell us a story about a boy
and a girl who were very much
like my brother and me, only they lived
amongst the dinosaurs. I don’t remember
how the stories went, but I remember
how I loved them, how my father’s voice
became part of the night, how everything
always turned out right for the kids
in the story. How much I wanted
to be that girl who rode on a pterodactyl,
and how grateful I felt to be the girl I was,
snug under the thin blue blanket,
our small room a cave where anything
could happen, the low tones of my father
quietly cradling me toward sleep.
By Example
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, poem, poetry, teaching on September 11, 2019| 7 Comments »
He taught me you can never have too much love
or too much ice cream in the freezer. That it matters
how you shake someone’s hand. He taught me
to pile wet seaweed on a bare patch of dirt
so the earthworms will come to the surface.
He taught me how to cast, to set the hook, to filet.
He taught me to cheer for myself. Once,
he taught me to say no, and to mean it,
and we shouted it over and over into the phone,
our voices a joyful chorus of refusal. He taught me
that despite unceasing pain, you can still
be grateful to be alive. That it is possible
to love someone very different from you.
That you can go to different schools together.
He taught me to take life seriously, and then
to speak in made up languages and giggle till you cry.
He taught me you can’t save everyone, but
you can save a few. And it’s important that you do.
In the Northwestern Hospital ICU
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, hospital, icu, love, mother, parents, poem, poetry on July 21, 2019| 4 Comments »
And as my mother steeped toward slumber,
her thin body wired to monitors,
there, surrounded by incessant beeping
and the red and green mountains and valleys
of pulse and pressure and the slow drip
of IV tubes finding her veins, yes,
there as her speech became mumbly and her
eye lids heavied, my father leaned over
the rails of the hospital bed to smooth
her gray hair and kiss her lips and whisper
I love you. And she rallied a smile and
whispered it back. And there, in the sterile room,
with all its instruments of cardiac measurement,
there was nothing, nothing that could chart
how open my heart, how—unable to hold
all the love I felt for them both—it broke
in the most beautiful way. How I prayed
it would stay that open, that broken, that whole.
**
Dear friends, thank you for all your good wishes. After having a heart surgery go wrong a few days ago, my mother was released today from the ICU and is now resting at home, and though she is not out of the woods yet, she is not in imminent danger. It’s been very scary and I thank you for all your thoughtful messages and prayers and thoughts. Rosemerry
*
I Should Have Raised Dogs
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, dogs, father, love, parenting, poem, poetry on June 30, 2019| 8 Comments »
I should have raised dogs.
That’s what my father always said
when I did something stupid.
Like when my friend and I were twelve
and we snuck into Raiders of the Lost Ark
with two seventeen-year old boys.
And there was dad, waiting
outside the theater looking like
exactly what he was—a rabid dad
hellbent on scaring the shit out of any boy
who might have unvirtuous thoughts
about his girl. He never said
what kind of dogs—poodles or labs
or mutts. I can just see him
walking the corridor of his kennel,
all the dogs barking. But dogs weren’t
his calling—the crates, the training,
special diets, vets. No,
he was the master of loving me
through my crazy mistakes
and my hormonal angst and my sudden refusal
to eat meat. I still smile thinking of
the way he would sit on the couch
and hold his arm open for me
to come sit beside him then snuggle.
The way he bought me a book
to decode my dreams. The way he took me
to piano lessons every Saturday
morning, then took me out for brunch
so we could talk. The way he still listens
when I’ve done something stupid
and then tells me he loves me.
Never once, despite all his lamentations,
did I think he would exchange me
for a chihuahua or beagle. No, there
was something almost sweet in his wish,
a hint of surrender in it, the sound
of his heart opening just a little bit wider
to let in the world, unleashed as it is.
Translating my Father
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged father, language, love, poem, poetry on June 15, 2019| 5 Comments »
And when my dad said,
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,”
he meant, “I love you.”
And when he exclaimed,
“Christ on a bike,”
he meant, “I love you.”
And when he said,
“Turn off the TV,”
he meant, “Turn off the TV.”
And when he said,
“No,” I knew
he meant, “I love you.”
It was, in fact, easy
to translate, though sometimes
I didn’t like the native tongue.
But I felt that love in every word,
the love beyond syntax
love beyond lexicon,
love big enough to hold
us both for a lifetime
and then be passed on.
Wish
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged father, Father's Day, healing, poem, poetry, rain on June 17, 2018| 6 Comments »
for my father
And when at last
the healing comes,
may it come like rain,
like rain after a long drought,
so soft that at first
you won’t be sure
it is raining,
but the fragrance
will overcome you,
green and wet,
and the world
will look dewy and
you’ll feel it in your lungs.
Yes, may the healing
arrive in a way that
astounds you,
as today when the rain turned
long and steady,
the kind that touches
and changes everything,
changes things so completely
you almost can’t remember
what it was like before,
yes, may healing come like this
so that everywhere you look,
all you see is promise.
One for My Dad
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, poem, poetry, tear on February 27, 2018| 8 Comments »