Father

I stare and stare at the black
and white photograph
one minute recognizing the man
leaning up against his car, hands
in pleated pockets
and the next minute there is nothing
in that face I know at all.
Yes, of course, it's a picture of my father
as a young man, after college at Pitt
on the GI Bill and before he married
my nineteen-year-old mother
when he was thirty-nine
and before he sat in the waiting room
of Sewickley Valley Hospital twice waiting
to meet his daughters.

I know he grew up in the depression
and always hated apple butter
because it was one of the only abundances
they had on Spring Street.
I know they often needed electric lights
at noon then, because the smog from
the steel mills two miles from the house
on the creek was thicker and darker
than an eclipse everyday.
I know that on hot days, he and his brother John
swam in the river and my
grandmother would say,
"Don't lie. I know y'uns been to the river.
I can smell it on you."
I know he had a dog named Sport,
a shepherd mix, who'd wait on him
all day usually to get out of school.
I know after high school, he worked
for a few dollars laying tongue-in-groove floors.

I know that when he heard about Pearl harbor,
he went the next day and enlisted in the Marines.
I've seen a few creased photos,
a "jap" headband with exotic writing
and an old rusty trunk with his ID number
that sits in his basement.
The only thing he ever told me about the war
was the fear of storming the beaches at Iwo Jima
waiting his turn, platoon sergeant, to alight.

That's all I know of him, bit and scraps
--and that he doesn't rock the boat,
or bend the rules.
He does his duty: pays his taxes in January,
votes in local elections, keeps his windows cleaned,
his house painted; he buys a battery for the car
every four yearsÑeven if it's still good.
He's called me Saturday mornings at
10:30 for twelve years without missing one.

Now, toward the end of his life,
it seems he is just biding time.
He doesn't go out with friends, or rent videos,
or take walks in his retirement, or even golf
anymore because "he's too old now."
Instead he drinks one and half cups of coffee
each morning with a piece of toast,
reads the paper, works the crossword,
has Campbell's soup, and a half a sandwich
at 11:00, takes a nap before dinner,
watches news shows
and World War II documentaries before bed at 10:00.

That's what I know of my father.
Like the picture, if I look behind his eyes,
I fear I'll see only paper, thin and crinkled.

He's waiting for death to
call him on the cordless and say, "Well, Bill,
let's be up and going now."
And when that call comes, he'll take off his
slippers and lie right down.
He won't reach upward
with his spirit hands toward eternity,
nor cling to the sheets with nails groping
to stay in his body, in his life.
No, he'll lie right down,
in the center of the bed,
arms at his sides,
because that's what he's supposed to do.

Go on to the next poem, Coffee in the Stars.

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