[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday Poem

sehr gut, mein Bruder.

Mike Geary
(eat your heart out, Erin, I learned German just picking it out of the air.
 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: John McCreery 
  To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 6:53 PM
  Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Sunday Poem



  My Father Taught Me

  My father taught me what it was to be a man
  To break open peelers and bait the hooks,
  clean the fish,
  swear at a balky outboard motor,
  a backlash,
  a miscast hook sticking in a hand, 
  "Hells Bells!" he roared 
  when my net missed the crab
  skittering across the creek bottom.

  My father taught me what it was to be a man
  To hoe corn so the blade skims just under the earth,
  slicing weeds, 
  but not "God damn it" the corn.
  To pick the beans and then
  go back to get the ones I missed.
  To thump a watermelon and listen for
  a thud.

  My father taught me what it was to be a man,
  Splitting knotty oak with a maul and wedge 
  when the axe just bounced.
  Being careful to keep the chain saw from jamming
  while dismembering that four-foot wide oak
  the hurricane knocked down.

  My father taught me what it was to be a man,
  To have a place you know like no one else does, 
  Every plant, every bird, 
  every beast that crawls
  through the bamboo he was first to plant
  in Virginia sand.
  To sit still at the end of a dock waiting for
  the great blue heron to come and
  sit a while beside you, 
  waiting for the wife you loved
  to come and take you with her.

  -- 
  John McCreery
  The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
  Tel. +81-45-314-9324
  http://www.wordworks.jp/

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