Muscle memory

Gold cherry
Poem of the week

By lavadis

Mon, 26 Feb 2024
  • 2357 reads
12 comments
 

My father never went away
he just became a yesterday
he told me people swing the bat
he wasn't willing to do that
his father taught him to be free
which meant that he abandoned me
he left his son in mortal fear
but mortals are not welcome here

Almost like a dream
but with a bagel for a halo
he discovered living was a place
to help the pain grow
his final words to me were to be
better than a martyr 
a lie within a truth
is just part of life's stigmata
always take advantage 
of the loneliness of angels
and all the while my mother 
just stared out the window 
at strangers

Time tells lies
it steals our lives

I saw him playing silent games
which taught me words
that warn me when it rains 
I followed him to war-torn lands
and washed the blood 
that covered both his hands

Eventually, there's silence in the pain
He told us to listen to the bloodshed in the rain

Writing of him now 
I cannot even see his face
I took the time to wash him off
and didn't leave a trace

Certificate U
Poem
Poetry
Fantasy

Comments

Submitted by celticman on

I shaved my dad before he died. Lived with him and worked with him. Never knew him. The strange thing is my sisters say I'm the dead spit of him. hmmmm. 

 

Submitted by lavadis on

Thank you for sharing that.

I wonder if these men who lived in a different universe just could not find a space ship to take them to our sides.  In the past years long after he passed I wanted to have just one conversation with him, then I didn't and now these words fell from somewhere. How could he tell me about what it was like to live in fear of his life from 1939 to 1945 and then marry a woman he had only known for a short while? He had no words for me.

 

Submitted by celticman on

I suppose we all end up with a woman (or man) we've only know a short while. I guess we'll fall back on they were a different generation. We're a different generation too. Perhaps if we write it down that'll help?

 

Submitted by lavadis on

So true. We are spacemen visiting the planets of our fathers and grandfathers the 1800's and the 2020's. These words are our flag on the moon. 

 

Submitted by memphis on

Therein lies no greater truth than these words. I concur. Time tells lies. It steals our lives.

William E Alexander

Submitted by lavadis on

Thank you. Time lied to my father convincing him that he would live long enough for his silence to end and then he br came a handful of earth. 

 

Submitted by D G Moody on

I read my own father in so much of your words; I felt you spoke for so many of us sons who never properly connected with their fathers; in particular with the generation that came back from WWII.

Dougie Moody

Submitted by lavadis on

Thank you. I don't think these men had the words to describe what they had seen, what they had been or who they had become. For 11 years he watched me like you watch a tree grow. No nurishment, no intervention, just observation. 

 

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

All the conversations we never had - this has struck a chord with so many already. Thank you lavadis, for sharing it here.

This is our Poem of the Week - Congratulations! It's also our Facebook and Twitter Pick of the Week

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Submitted by lavadis on

Thank you so much 

 

Submitted by Magnolia Fay on

It feels sad and very concrete at the same time.

It made me think of my father. He is from the generation after WWII and his own father didn't fight in that specific one, because he was an invalid of the ill-conceived African campaigns of the Italian regime and passed when my dad was 18. My dad is caring in his own, very practical, way, but very much a product of that struggle to communicate, especially on the feeling side of things. 

I recently asked him if it served him and the men of his generation well to be so stern and unwilling to face and discuss their emotions (unless they get angry, that is). He just smiled and shrugged and said 'I can't say if it's good or bad, it is what it is.' We speak often about how things have changed between his generation and mine. I suppose having one nosy daughter who won't stop prodding has forced him out of his shell a bit. :-) 

It also makes me think of my husband's family, which is interesting for me to experience, as an only child who grew up in a woman-dominated household. My husband has two brothers, and his dad is even less communicative than mine, and yet you can see he cares deeply in a totally practical, unspoken way. It's all in the acts. 

Sorry for the excessively long commentary. Your poem gave me an excuse to think fondly of the men in my life I care about. So many times, I wish they could just express how they feel and experience the powerful bonding that comes from being openly vulnerable. Especially in suffering, but also in joy. I guess, like my dad says, it is what it is, and we all strive for the best we can get and offer others with what life gave us to work with. 

Your dad offered you silence and you turned it into these words. That in itself is beautiful alchemy. 

Magnolia Fay

Submitted by lavadis on

Thank you so much Magnolia for taking the time to comment on my poem. 
I have vacillated between wishing I could have an hour with Bernard just so I could experience my father if briefly and being angry with him. How do you spend 11 years with your only son and never engage with him? But then how did it feel to be in fear of your life night and day for 6 years. To know millions of people want to exterminate you? Couple that with the mores of his generation. It gives reason but no reasons. What is a son to a silent father? 
 

Speak to your father all you can. It is so very precious.