Poetry
by Mickey Grubb
Lessons
of Life
As I came down the stairs
I saw him sitting there,
alone, staring out the window.
I wasn't sure if his eyes were red
from being up all night
with the empty glass he held
or maybe something else.
I realized for the first time
that Dad had been alone
most of his sixty-eight years.
For as long as I remember
he would leave for work before sunrise
and never come home before sunset.
His days were as dark as his nights,
swallowed by the blackness
of an underground mine.
I wondered what he was thinking now.
He and I have never talked much.
But we shared moments.
Even though I was adopted,
Dad called me his son and worked hard
to provide for the two of us
always coming home late
too tired to do much talking.
He would often fall asleep on the kitchen floor
with his feet stretched out into the hallway.
Sleep became a temporary death.
I don't think he shed any tears
when he came home from work one evening
and found the note from Mom
that said she was leaving for a better life.
That was thirty years ago.
That's when he swore off drinking.
For six days he was completely sober.
I have seen my father cry
only twice in the thirty-eight years
that I have known him.
Once when his mother passed
and the other when ole Spot died.
My Grandmother tried to help out
with motherly duties, mostly for her son.
That was before my teen years,
before the war of the worlds
and the clash of wills,
a generation gap too wide to bridge.
I believe that's what drove her crazy.
She left this world
not able to recognize any living soul.
With her last words she called her only son
by the name of some forgotten relative.
It shattered my Dad.
The tears flowed as he turned away to hide.
I had no words.
I cried too because he had.
He handled it like he handled most crises, alone.
I tried to love my grandmother.
I remembered how tightly he held
the lifeless dog to his chest
just before he placed
him in the hole we had dug
beneath the old red oak
where the doghouse used to sit
and wondered if he had ever
been embraced so compassionately.
We both cried then.
We just sat together
in the shade of the large tree
in silence, broken, heart broken.
I'm not sure where all the time has gone.
But I know this visit was too short.
Now that I've turned forty I'm thinking
maybe it's time for my life on the road to end,
to come home and get sober,
put behind two failed marriages
and the silence around the dining table.
Maybe it's time for Dad and me to have that talk.
Like Henley, the more I know
the less I understand.
All the things I thought I knew
I'll have to learn again.
But first, I'll light myself a smoke
and pour us both another drink.
top
Framed
Merely a faded photograph,
corralled visions of what might have been.
The gateway to your heart,
the keeper of your soul,
what do those eyes see?
Things hoped for, the myriad dreams
even before the birth of me.
Beauty radiates from the splendor
of your face, smooth skin,
with silent lips unable to speak
destiny's fate.
Frozen, the image burned,
framed display
of interned silent mysteries,
trapped within the chambers of the heart,
a mother's yearnings, sealed,
pleading for remembrance
of the soft wide-open arms that held
life in the safe and warm cradled bosom.
She stands beside him sitting,
gazing, wondering like me,
how the times were then,
how will they be,
framed.
top
© Mickey Grubb Copyright
2009
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