My Father

As a boy I told him a lie
he knew
that I lit the matches
I felt my stomach lurch
when I swore
that I didn’t in spite
of sulphur
lingering in the air
a taste of things to come
I thought

he was a carpenter
fifty years of vocational
devotion
his carpenter’s hands
able to lift me up
as if I were nothing
though I was everything
to him

cigarettes, cigars, pipes
equally adored until
the doctors

and his body
said
no more

retirement bowed him
for a time
before he found himself again
in the soil of a garden
he had never noticed

someday I will plant his love
in my garden
where it will grow
and grow
until it is singed
by the edge of the sun

Previously published by Sky Island Journal