Poetry Friday is hosted today by Rebecca Herzog at Sloth Reads. She has written a delightful poem about salad. It sounds delicious, except I imagine my arteries clogging just reading the recipe.
Don't forget to check out the links to other participants sharing poetry today.
My father would have been eighty seven today.
He and my mother were on their way to a Masters' Bridge Tournament in San Fransisco when he had an aneurysm and died. He was fifty seven.
He was injured in a logging accident when he was only twenty five. Although he recovered, he used a wheelchair for the rest of his life. I wrote this poem for him awhile ago. I added the last stanza recently, because my father survived that tragedy and came out the other side a better person than he might have otherwise been.
Tribulation
My father
was a logger,
a high rigger,
a faller of stoic giants.
It's perversely fitting
that one of them felled him
My father
was handsome:
a tall, blonde,
Nordic god,
heir to kingdoms of possibility.
When gods fall, they fall hard.
My father
couldn’t climb up
into his before.
He raged against
his impossibly broken body
and let dark descend.
My father
took years to climb
up out of that dark
into the sunlight of a new life.
Vestiges of it left him volatile
and humbled,
our hero.
What a beautiful tribute to your dad. He sounds like quite a person.
ReplyDeleteI love the imagery throughout your poem and the turn of the last stanza. Your father sounds like a strong person.
ReplyDeleteI know this story from your other poems, Cheriee, but love that you created just for your father, and it's so poignant, showing that he did persevere after his horrific accident. This line is a new way to say it, and wonderful: "couldn’t climb up/into his before."
ReplyDeleteOh, Cheriee....what a tribute. That first stanza really pulls me in...but then the second is just as strong and stays strong the whole way through. I love this! Nicely done.
ReplyDeleteWhat a powerful, poignant poem. What challenges he faced during his lifetime! Thank you for telling us a little about him. He was indeed a handsome man.
ReplyDeleteOh, wow, Cheriee - I remember this story, too. These lines "up out of that dark
ReplyDeleteinto the sunlight of a new life" are so affirming; he must have been very special. Wishing you and yours sunlight this Thanksgiving - or at least warm company if skies are overcast.
What a lovely tribute to your dad. I like how the thread of climbing is woven throughout the poem and ends with climbing "into the sunlight of a new life." It must have been devastating to lose him at such a young age. I lost an uncle in a logging accident when I was a teen. I think most people don't realize how dangerous that occupation can be.
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