Tar Pits
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The last time I saw my fatherwas at the La Brea Tar Pitsa year after the divorce.
He was still living in St. Louis,running the businessto the bottomof a fifth of Jim Beam.
In my mind’s eyehe is a specimen, a fetusof a father, floating in a jarin some roadside museum.
I was nine. We had nothingto say, so he took meto the La Brea Tar Pits, asdivorced fathers do.
He was a membraneat that point.An effigy tremblingin another man’s suit.
We staredat the three-toed sloth,the dire wolf with itsmarble eyes.
My father, I wishyou could rise from thatblack pit and emerge
into light, like the tigerwe saw that day,sheathed again in muscle,its great teeth like sabers. [End Page 485]
GEORGE BILGERE’s most recent collection of poetry is Imperial (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014). His work is familiar to National Public Radio audiences through his frequent appearances on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. He has received grants and fellowships from the NEA, the Pushcart Foundation, the Witter Bynner Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. He lives and teaches in Cleveland, Ohio, which has made him hardy and resolute.
