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