[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday Poem
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 19:29:08 -0500
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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