Today you would be ninety-seven
if you had lived, and we would all be
miserable, you and your children,
driving from clinic to clinic,
an ancient fearful hypochondriac
and his fretful son and daughter,
asking directions, trying to read
the complicated, fading map of cures.
But with your dignity intact
you have been gone for twenty years,
and I am glad for all of us, although
I miss you every day—the heartbeat
under your necktie, the hand cupped
on the back of my neck, Old Spice
in the air, your voice delighted with stories.
On this day each year you loved to relate
that the moment of your birth
your mother glanced out the window
and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today
lilacs are blooming in side yards
all over Iowa, still welcoming you.
Father by Ted Kooser
from Delights & Shadows, Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA 2004
I have always loved male poets of a certain age. I cut my teeth on Robert Frost, was dazzled by e e cummings, and swooned to Neruda. College and friends broadened my horizons but I never lost my love for male voices. At some point, around 40, my tastes ran to older men. I couldn't have told you why Merwin, Snyder, Stafford, Kooser, Hass all spoke to me. There was something piercing in them, something spare. The poems hit me like a chill wind from the north heralding autumn after a long, hot summer. They're wise, maybe a little resigned, but still hopeful, with the slightly desperate edge hope gives us to the very last, if we let it. I thought I loved them because they had a sense of the press of time and were redolent with the scent of our mortal span. And maybe that was one of the reasons why I love those poets and their poems, but not the only one I recently learned.
My "a-ha's" typically come as a brief flash of insight after a long, slow simmer. This one came after a recent poem-of-the-day posting by Lewis Ellingham. It wasn't the poem as much as the year of his birth, the wrinkles and the white hair. He brought my dad to mind, 2-and-a-half years passed. I sat there, looking at the picture of the poet, thinking of my dad and at some point it hit me, that these are my new fathers, the older male voices I sought to fill the void where my father's voice once was. Why they drew me from my earliest years, I cannot tell you exactly, but I suspect it was the divorce, my dad moving out, the silence of the voice that so marked my world, now relegated to every other weekend. It was hard, the divorce, but it seems there was a bright side. It prepared me for what was inevitable, the first man in my life gone.
I miss my dad. I miss his voice, the conversational places we could sometimes reach once I became a woman, that went past our disappointments real and imagined with one another, a place of true connection. Those were the times I knew he loved me and how much I loved him. Those were the times I could let myself be vulnerable, young, and know I would be safe and taken care of. I found that place with these favorite poets, quiet, fully present, truly authentic, father to daughter. Even when I could not find it with my dad, I could find it with Stafford, Snyder and Merwin. And now that my dad is gone, I can find it again through these poets and others that find their way to me.
My "a-ha's" typically come as a brief flash of insight after a long, slow simmer. This one came after a recent poem-of-the-day posting by Lewis Ellingham. It wasn't the poem as much as the year of his birth, the wrinkles and the white hair. He brought my dad to mind, 2-and-a-half years passed. I sat there, looking at the picture of the poet, thinking of my dad and at some point it hit me, that these are my new fathers, the older male voices I sought to fill the void where my father's voice once was. Why they drew me from my earliest years, I cannot tell you exactly, but I suspect it was the divorce, my dad moving out, the silence of the voice that so marked my world, now relegated to every other weekend. It was hard, the divorce, but it seems there was a bright side. It prepared me for what was inevitable, the first man in my life gone.
I miss my dad. I miss his voice, the conversational places we could sometimes reach once I became a woman, that went past our disappointments real and imagined with one another, a place of true connection. Those were the times I knew he loved me and how much I loved him. Those were the times I could let myself be vulnerable, young, and know I would be safe and taken care of. I found that place with these favorite poets, quiet, fully present, truly authentic, father to daughter. Even when I could not find it with my dad, I could find it with Stafford, Snyder and Merwin. And now that my dad is gone, I can find it again through these poets and others that find their way to me.
