Father's Day

Before my Father passed on I remembered Father's Day as in a rush to remember not to forget to get something sent to him.  I loved my Dad and I knew he loved me unquestioningly and so, sometimes, as is human nature when one trusts another to be there for them, other things got in the way and I did things to please other people at the risk of putting my father behind them in importance.  Once, when I was a teenager, his birthday fell near a friend's birthdate.  I asked him for some money to buy a present, which he gave me.  He was happy, thinking that I was thinking of him.  I wasn't.  In my immature state, I was only thinking of buying something nice for a friend I wanted to impress.  I didn't need to impress him.  He was already mine.  What he received for his birthday was a block of wood that I had drawn a picture of myself on and wrote, "for your birthday, I give you all my love."  He was a little taken aback when he realized I hadn't "bought" him a birthday present and wondered what I had done with the money he gave me.  I explained and he was a little upset and over the years brought up that occassion numerous times..... but, you were never able to walk into his office after that day without being able to view that block of wood with that picture and those words.

Today, I own that block of wood and a gold chain he wore for years.  

As father day approaches I find my thoughts spending lots of time with him and remembering little things that I had not thought on in years.  I feel a poem coming on... :o )

WOJ  (William Owen James)

This funny man, I know him so well.

Sometimes by the pants that fall a little too low

as he bends over to tend the portulaca.

Wearing ragged jeans, a black panther coursing up the forearm,

looking behind he tells one tale.

When he stands, bare chest - sparse hair

the gold chain binding his neck tells a different story.

He does this - lives in a beautiful home,

and, in later years, dresses as a pauper, dons diamonds and gold

that don't shine as bright as his blue eyes.

He, who came from roots in those who took from the ground,

and forgot to return its generosity, never really touched it before. 

He looks like a gardener over the plants

but I can't recall his hands ever dirty with soil.

Yet the earth takes it back.

When hands will no longer tend to anything,

when lungs no longer open to receive the gift of trees,

(trees, that his ancestors took too many lives of)

when hips and hands can no longer hold up the pants 

we once held up no matter how precariously or how well. 

It takes back the black panther painted on the right arm,

the twinkling eyes that once lit my nights,

and the once dirt free hands become full of, become one with soil.

And the diamonds don't go with him.  They never do.