Half the Man is Twice the Child

The affection I assigned my father’s smoke rings are a deceit. His souvenir blue Parisian ashtray became an heirloom. He stuffed the basement rafters with magazines to insulate imagination. His hands, in golden gloves, worked the speed bag hanging in the garage like a leather light bulb of an ideal temperament.

We had similar bones. Flag posts skinny in the wind, racing hearts biding time until the straight away demanded labor. When the small town rules dictated snow fall, and singing cardinals flitted from branch to branch, he chopped ice from the walk and spread salt in the wounds of winter.

He predicted my fame as a result of orthodontia. Knowing came to his smile easy as whistling. The edge of the grey blue lake beyond the church tower rose and fell like the breath of a nap. Sometimes he shared dreams in pencil sketches left on the breakfast table like a map for future pirates to unfold before school.

Advice was a clumsy tool, drawn aside as if the timing were wrong and the meaning too long to be of use in a fight. Keep a sense of humor being the chief strategy of surviving the ill tempered traps frustrating fools.

I folded a note into the pocket of his funeral pants. It should’ve been this one as I can’t remember the lettering. His friends remarked how much, how little, how often. The stained glass light lay across his chest like medals in a parade of white horses sans heroes.

The sky triangulates life, loss, and love. A wave kisses the sand and retreats into the current situation. Arm in arm a boy becomes the next man to lift angel wings from the fallen ground and sing until the air becomes firm.