Once every week,

always the night before school started, a Sunday,

she would line them up like toy soldiers

and brandish the sharp little cutters

too small for her arthritic knuckles.

 

The finger on her left hand where her wedding ring was permanently stuck

(and no longer necessary)

was bent like a timeworn back that hates to straighten

when she waved for them to stand still and stay upright

until she could examine the assemblage of dirt.

 

They hoped for just the right amount of filth

underneath their nails:

too much meant they hadn’t washed;

not enough meant they needed to work harder.

 

And then with a whoosh, her heavy fingers would zip through

ten

twenty

thirty

forty

fifty

sixty seventy eighty extremities

all of different shapes and sizes

and with similar amounts of loam,

determining them to be somewhat clean

and agreeably punctilious.

 

When they were done,

one by one she would look them in the eyes

and give their rears a push

that sent them flying towards the bath

to wash the country off their bodies

until it started to collect again,

as soon as they got out.

 

The woman with the bent fingers—

my grandmother—

would then gather her thoughts and sit down for five minutes

to do her own nails with a smile on her face,

examining the thick raised veins and ridges of callous

until it was time to keep on with the chores

and put the clippers away.

When I see you coming down the road,

tires spinning and spitting out snow;

the high cottonwoods hefting their thick arms to wave

and the neighbors twisting their necks to watch the silver dust fly,

I forget the distance between us;

the jackrabbit and his burrow and the cold, white field in-between;

the horse pacing the line of fence connecting

she and the kind blanket inside.

 

Then I picture you,

moving through the sable light

on a high plateau of mountain scree in the cold,

your resolute lips turning blue until you can get to me;

 

hoping you will always find me

and that I will always keep you warm…

 

One thousand geese at least.

I think to cover my head

as they hover and call towards the East.

The light is changing in the sky—

an open-ended supernova

through the grey-white trees.

The geese soon table their wings;

descend upon another half-frozen pond in the distance

and then diminish into reticence.

 

 

 

 

Will you remember

how we drove down the street after bedtime
just to see how the Christmas lights looked
over the ignited portico of our house;

how we made so many promises
like the promise to move to the country,
(the one we kept).

How you wanted horses and chickens
in the country house,

but the move cost us so much
and the remodel,
fixing the family car
and propane in the winter—

that the fence would have to wait
and the barn
and invariably the horses and chickens.

How you forgave us all of the above
everytime we turned pirouettes in the kitchen
and used different voices
to read Robert Frost on the occasion of each snowfall
and Shakespeare in English accents
under the balcony of your painted rooms
during those early childhood years.

How you gave us so much more than we could ever give you
(but hope it didn’t feel that way)
even when it was hard
to keep each other close.

That much like sonnet and free verse,
being the parent
and being the child
are two different kinds of poetry.

Do you reach through the stars
just to touch their hair;
feel the pillow’s sunken scars
where their heads have laid there?

Graze the tips of their noses
with your soft outline of transparent,
the spot each generation discloses
not one shape too far errant?

Do you love the centuries of breathing
in each matchless breath they take;
their faces a nebulous wreathing
of hundreds of years yet to make?

Are there a thousand angels, your ancestors
gently pulling you back to their sphere;
guarding you, our  sacred investors
and making sure we will always be here?

For years I have watched my father move like a river
smoothing over rocks
and making round the sharp edges;
flowing through twists and turns
gracefully as a measure of time.

He is deeper in places
where most can’t meet or distinguish–
a floor that’s hard to touch or see
but must be a pleasant place to drown.

For years the river has swelled with rain
and maintained depth through the drought;

for years, the winter river has never been frozen altogether—
its lower layers never subdued to stillness when the cold comes,
yet stirring still.

But this river in particular—
this long, deep river with unmeasured depth and countless vortexes
and variations and bends,
has been hard to watch.

The winters come colder now
and the water fights to advance underneath the layers of ice.

A winter unkind is the death of a moving river—
sometimes predicted by time,
other times discordant and unexpectedly fast.

But all the time,
everytime—
(I must remind myself that this is the thing about fathers):
the river is the last province to freeze when winter makes it gain,
and always the first one thaw,
with the triumph of spring.