Let what comes come.
Let what goes go.
Find out what remains.
― Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)
I told you the beans needed weeding,
and while you’re at it,
pick the ripe okra.
Marvin deserved his beating,
I know he weeded all the Johnson grass,
but he also chopped down all the corn.
Well, maybe I was wrong
about the whipping.
But he got over it.
Your brother is hard-headed,
he won’t listen. I know
you got upset, always the sensitive one.
Nobody ever cut me any slack.
I built the house.
I poured the foundation by myself.
Your beautiful mother was ill.
I went to work,
I paid the bills for all eight of us.
You were lazy, a dreamer,
a college degree
one of your crazy schemes,
sitting around,
sitting in,
avoiding work.
In spite of the fights,
we had good times,
vacations, white beaches,
Panama City,
we played on Gulf Shores,
rubbed lotion on the sunburn,
we took care of each other.
Just know that I loved you,
and I loved your mother.
Remember
when you left us to go West,
back to school, you betrayed us.
But I was the one
drove the forty miles
from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa
to give you
the hundred dollars,
to say goodbye.
Ugh wow, I feel these generational collisions/differences/juxtapositions often and I find them fascinating and at times frustratingly stubborn. You really captures this in your piece.
I recently read Can’t Even, a book about generations, that was so captivating.
Thank you for your piece!
I loved this when I first read it and love it even more now. It speaks volumes–for one man, for many men. Bravo.
I heard this or read it before somewhere, like Gene. Reading it here the poem strikes me as an archetypal poem, a perfect microcosm of the ambivalence we have about our fathers. My father scared me at times as a young child because he had an unpredictable bad temper. But so many things that I learned or imitated from him…I find I am still applying in my life as an adult and decades after his death. Thank you, Charles!