The Fiddler of Driskill Hill: Poems

Daddy

 Some afternoons I waken from a dream To dream on to the rocker’s to-and-fro And the tick-tock pendulum of a clock That holds me for a moment out of time Till long lost scenes come welling from the depths By happy access in creation’s play. And one such afternoon when winter chill Brought stillness to each autumn leaf and blade Stiffened by winds that dry their dew to frost I saw you making clay pots in your shop. It took you all your life to reach that place, The eldest of five brothers and at times A stand-in father even as a child Who if you swung your bat and got a hit Would have to let another run for you So you could hurry back to baby boys Card-playing parents left in your sole charge. On Fridays you would skate down Egan Street Then over rippling hill bluffs toward the Red And back again, library books in hand. At home, in a rocking chair, you’d sit and read Those books in stacks each weekend, left to right The piles of read and unread up and down Till Sundays when you skated back to town, Your father baffled by his egghead son. Then after graduation you would work Some months in Faulkner’s world, your weekends spent Shooting pool in New Orleans till the draft Found you at last and you became a cook On Asian ships till A-bombs brought you home. And there, although the West still drew your blood (Cooled by a mother’s clutching reluctance), By grace at Highland Baptist Church you met Saline’s Miss Anne, small-town nobility, Who loved you for yourself, helping you evade Maternal suffocation just enough Daddy Shreveport and Thibodaux after Sylvia Plath, author of “Daddy”  To be the artist you were meant to be After those long tough teaching days at school Or summers as a lifeguard at the pool That kept a wife and child from poverty. And as your youth gave way to middle age, A principal at Judson you opposed The peewee football dads and sanctioned games In which they all could play, both girls and boys, And with that stubborn hand-pressed ribbon machine Cut even eighth-place ribbons so no child Who tried at all would lack some accolade. Coach, umpire, fan for soccer, softball, track, You found that childhood you had been denied With children whose respect grew into love. Each year, guided by you, a sixth-grade class Made murals for the cafeteria wall, Our New-World story told in grout and tile, Columbus, Indians, Pilgrims, soldiers massed In clashing blue and gray, a settled West, And then this century from Kitty Hawk To Cape Canaveral, pictures no doubt Too innocent yet made for innocence, Each panel immovable, fastened tight By hidden bolts still known to you alone. Years later, drained by central-office stress, Administrative politics, decrees, At fifty-six you gave up and retired, Taught college art at Centenary two sweet years And ran your boyhood’s bases when you won 10Ks and marathons till Parkinson’s Slowed you to a shuffle, walker, chair Whose wheels your weakened fingers clutched and pushed, Great-hearted racer who pressed on and on Toward death’s black tape broken with your last breath.  And now a decade later I still see So clear in heightened musings, deepest dreams, Two images of you: one near the end, Painting in your wheelchair, stiffened hands Then capable only of dabs and streaks That filled a tautened canvas primed in white With colors pure in form and formlessness, “Trying something new,” you wryly said, Almost like a child learning ABCs, Your primer’s words of yellow, blue, and red; The other, thirty years ago this fall, You singing in your workshop, shaping clay In male and female obelisk and pot, Then glazing them in colors of the earth, Late autumn shades of gold, brown, orange, gray Fired in a backyard kiln you fenced against Neighbors afraid to feel creation’s heat, Cones melting under kiln gods undisturbed By matter’s agony or by a love That forged them too, your passion made serene. ...