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Grandfather Father Me
Is it just the space, the vacancy of him --
that I love what I know, worship what I don't --
that makes me see my deaf grandfather always
in a gesture of departure, of leaning forward, slightly
turned, about to sign something that would never come?
What makes me remember my father, deaf, pale,
almost lemony in a dusklight crossing an Indianapolis
diner doorway, the only white man for a mile in a cowboy hat
and embroidered boots, singing for me while he signed,
gesturing to the cadence of a slow, pitchless voice
under the striped slants of patched awnings nodding
over yellow windows and glass doorways flashing
in the late-day sun.Is that how it was?
Was I a black boy walking from fourth grade
on a liquor-store street, in the shut-down, exasperated hollows
where corner vendors haggled behind makeshift racks pieced
together by duct tape and a hustle?Were the walls flamboyant,
graffiti caked in arcs of fuzzy crimson over the half-moon smiles
of postered real-estate spokesmen, the paint byzantine
with symbols and emblems, studded medallions dangling from gold
chains of fuck you and fuck the man, my father
considering the knock-off persian rugs and sloppy
ceramics tilted there beside the polish of mock porcelain,
an egyptian vase gluedwith sparkles, knick-knacks gorgeous yet cheap,
because they were things you would have to make?
Who can tell me why, after my Grandfather, a white man
I can hardly bring back, hunched with Alzheimer's in a worn wheelchair
by a picture window, the poplars always talking
to him with their hundred hands, why I can only remember
delicious air fogging the dusty showcase windows of a second-hand
furniture store, wet smoke lifting off the ribs of a steel barrel grille,
that eldritch swirl through the soap spray of the carwash, stinging
the low eyes of children playing hooky, leaving
the mildewed seven-eleven with one-dollar sackfuls
of gum and tootsie-rolls?What if it didn't happen this way?
What if the only sweet thing was my father holding my hand,
helping me into shotgun in his seventy-three camarro,
until we burned up the interstate? Suppose with me, for a moment,
that in a cloudshift, say, he had my Grandfather's profile,
his brim-blotched hat perfected in a bleach of sunlight.
Maybe it was like a reverie of hey-days, a childhood's cheap thrill
that keeps the heart thumping give it back, give it back, demanding
some beautiful thing to punctuate into the past by its small amnesias,
its exaggerations, something gorgeous yet yours, a thing
you would have to make.
Frank Gallimore
*************
:hi:
RL
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