Afterwork (for Clarence Edward Carlson, 1897 – 1989)

I.   Eating (1954)

After work I brought
braunschweiger or gorgonzola
and we two would eat,
gorgonzola with strawberry jam
and a cup of tea
or sausage
with mustard and coffee. 

It’s a pleasure just to remember
those times we sat
alone at table together without much talk
in the kitchen
on Saturday night. 

Or I broiled a steak. 
Sirloin, bone in, was his favorite,
but again no talk,
just the pleasure of sitting and eating. 

It’s a long walk home
to where now, still patient, he’s waiting. 

I sit a chair with the burden of loving and hating.
Here, as anywhere,
these moments like old songs
come back.

2.   Manhood

We never said much to each other. 
Words were too thin,
nothing solid enough to bite into.
The questions asked
of fathers by sons and vice versa
just got passed by
like towns on a triple A map
or a fishing hat
left hanging in the hall on a nail. 

To touch, to admit was important,
still we couldn’t hug,
two tall men, one young, shaking hands,
just a hard, quick squeeze. 
What was left unsaid stood between us. 
And now he’s gone
like a groundhog back into his ground.

He has left his silence.

3.   Groundhog (1990)

Still it’s true that in some ways he’s here. 
Every day I see his eyes looking back from a mirror,
pretty much his face,
though the moustache he trimmed was much thinner. 

How he stood, I stand. 
And I wonder what he’d think of the weather. 
Perhaps he’d hand me advice like the sweaters he wore
when the nights turned cold. 

I’m old enough now to ask questions.
I look down in,
look as deep in myself as I can,
dig the groundhog out from his sleep
to explain his evasions. 

It’s a dream I have.
He lies there curled up in my lap, deep in sleep, relaxed,
eyes closed to the light, ears to questions,
and I’m left to comb
with fingers his fur like the cat's
that still has his tongue.

4.   Hoarfrost

His father died young. He was a farmer.
In that man’s opinion,
too much credit was given to words. 

Words gave direction,
and only in Swedish, to his sons
so that words were strung on the line
of parental expectance. 

He could be kind,
but not to his horses or sons,
so that harsh words hung
like breath
in the still winter air

and like hoarfrost clung
to his mustache
in the way that it clung to the brush by streams
where white steam arose like a fog
at the sun's first warming.

5.   Witness

I never could talk to my son
And so life goes on,
old patterns begetting old patterns. 
We start with one
and one and move forward to two
and from two to four,
four to eight, and resolve to sixteen,
then it’s sixty-four,
an unremarkable progression of numbers,

until what’s seen
is the distance that falls in between:
the forgotten dreams,
blank spots left in witness on the wall
where protected seams,
if uncovered, still retain the old brilliance,
and the morning sun
lights the place where frustration was flung
and we spot the stains.

6.   Hartford (1995)

So lapses happen. So my son took his leave, taking
            life,
and my father listens,
perhaps grieves for all sons that are lost. 

It is hard to tell now that sickness and death intervene. 

Or perhaps thinks well, thinks that somewhere far off
            faces glisten, 
where each day sons listen to rain that falls gently
and at night
hear the pulse of blood
given voice in the thrumming of insects;

while inside his room the nurses change place with
            injections
and he’s tied in bed for reasons he can’t understand,
and the hands he thought
automatic
no longer respond;

like two birds they fly,
erratic
when he most needs to use them. 

Still his thoughts give way
eventually
to memories and sleep. 

We are all like sheep
gathered close in the folds of God's bosom.

7.   Geese (Morehead, 1990)

A father and son sit and listen.
They can hear the leaves
and the birds’ to-and-fro in the trees.
There is little talk. 

They sit side-by-side in their chairs,
maybe legs stretched out
or crossed, trousers bent, at the knees,
so that what one sees
is what the other, if awake, also sees.

And today they see
a meadow in its fence and a tree,
hear a flock of geese
on their way and as noisy as dogs,
see how geese like cogs
or the pieces of a puzzle intersect, 

how the lead falls back
and another moves up to take its place.

8.  Apricots (Burbank, 1943)

Or, perhaps, in that instant love is lost,
like a leaf dropped off
giving way to black branches and grief. 
There’s a sense of pain,
nothing concrete the mind can assess. 
What the mind retains
is the memory of kneeling under trees
where the ripe fruit dropped
(sweet and musty, lightly bruised in the dust)
was the fruit we sought
and picked up and paid for and washed
and preserved in glass.

9.   Benediction (1995)

Out of memory he constructs his illusion: that somewhere
            what’s right
and what’s good and what’s true and what’s beautiful
will make the night
sweet
with the night-blooming cereus;

that if not this night,
then some night, even if never seen,
there will be a time of gladness so apart from contradiction
that the sky will shine

like the face of God in benediction
and the small stars climb
like mice
up the ladder to heaven and to gates flung wide.