Fatherdom – a Trilogy of Remembrance
by Odin Roark

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Downpours Unexpected

I was sad,
so I anchored my sweater over my head.

Once, I was wet.
My father removed his rain jacket and protected me.
I never gave it back.
He never asked for its return.

Years later,
my boyhood behind me,
I’d grown into the sleeves once too long,
its water-proofing
outliving its prescient owner.

Father was a working man,
knowing truck engines,
complex systems of movement,
the viscosity of everything,
needed to make everything work.

He forgot little,
not even birthdays,
now long ignored by his son.

Yes…

This was a father who rejoiced in teaching his son
how to wash dishes,
do laundry,
mow the lawn,
shovel the snow (“always with a straight back,”) he cautioned,
over and over he taught, and then over again.

Memory is ever-fleeting now.
My tomorrows may be forgotten,
but not the today of my tears.

The yesterday of his passing,
his grave now of summer scorched grass,
so in need of the unexpected downpour,
now being purged from the sky,
and my closed eyelids.

Once I was wet.
My father removed his rain jacket
and protected me.
________________________________________

Grease Monkey Rainbows

How colorfully the reflective smears ignited the senses.

How sinuous the undulating slick remained forever permanent,
its unintentional abstracts made prescient.

Dank syrup of engines idle,
spilled upon aged concrete
where the mechanic beneath rusted warriors
drained yesterday's tensile stress,
fresh loading tomorrow's fluid to live.

How focused his oily footprints remain,
now aloft riding the escort of Valhalla,
gliding upon colors of other-world palettes,
yet remaining forever heroic,
forever indelible,
in a little boy’s perpetual memory.

Yesteryear’s ever present ether continues embracing,
bestowing a blinding courage for the senses to endure,
even as the buried vestige remains dark.

The smell revered.
The smooth touch esteemed.
The unbridled colors forever a reminder of love.

Diesel rainbows,
still rippling in this man-child’s quiet ebb.
________________________________________

It’s Only Fair…Really

Words sound their echoes from long ago
when the year’s final harvest offered rooted stew for remembering.
Yet, today, to enjoy, it requires the pulling of tangled tendrils,
strands clinging tenaciously earthward,
the synapses of remembrance
struggling a determined gasp through the aging curse.

My patriarchal grandfather,
disintegrating yet further with every pull,
tugged up the final resistance that day.
In his basket of potatoes, beets, turnips and a soft bed of kale,
he laid the parsnip gently down, as if it might be the least he could do,
tugging it from nature’s care as he did.
His arthritic hands pushed the disturbed soil back into place
as if creating a burial of sorts. That’s what I thought as a child.
When I asked him why he was so careful with the return of the uprooted soil,
he said, “Just returning the earth’s soul for another beginning…another seasonal lifetime.”

Like his words, there was something bucolic about his Cherokee hair,
sometimes pastoral in its ponytail, sometimes left to mix with his work,
his sweat—even his tears. I remember.
It was as dark as calligrapher’s ink, shiny as black agate.
And when there came a gust, like the mane of a wild steed,
it would dance with the wind, stirring my sense of… what?

That’s how it was that last day of summer,
when he stood erect; his sweaty skin a dark mirror
beside the fire-red oak and yellow leaf birches of summer’s end.
He sighed and blinked droplets of toil from his dust-weathered eyes
upon the supper about to be prepared.

This was many years back.

Walking beside creaking knees bent forward as we strolled in silence,
save the chanting of a quiet prayer of thanks he always left the garden with,
the shaman like sage, my grandfather, whose stories became my dreams at night,
held my hand and we walked.

I remember the permanence of his impact,
we were stepping quietly
and he bent wearily down and picked up a rotten peach.
Inside, a crazed worm squirmed in panic,
the sticky amber juice of the fruit seeming to trap it.
‘Course I was a kid. What did I know about suffering?
But he did something I never forgot. He gently fingered the creature loose,
bending his grating knees to carefully return the worm to the earth.
He whispered, “fair is fair.”

Grandfather visits my loneliness—knows my dreams.
He visits often. We make root-stew, his favorite.
Sometimes we watch the robins during early morning as they feast on worms.
“Actuality is very short,” he cautions. We nod, I know not what he means.
“It’s only fair, really” we say together. “It’s only fair.”

Suddenly, there’s meaning… I think.