 |
| Me and my father, Willis Barnstone, in our home, Bloomington, IN, early 70s, photo by Richard Phlum. |
On the occasion of my every birthday, my father writes me a poem. I remember when I was still a very small girl, around 4, he would read me "my companion of the hills / I take your hand," and he'd take my hand. He also transcribed my poems, as he did my daughter, Zoe's, when she was little. From the beginning he encouraged us all to sing, to be artists. On Father's Day, I offer a poem for my dad that gives a glimpse of our creative lives, when we spent our summers in Vermont.
Poetry
Game
—for Dad and Blanche
I could eat the words,
if one were
“strudel.”
If it were “cheese,”
I couldn’t stop
myself
recalling my friends’ birthday
parties,
how the farmer
takes a wife,
the choosing game, and my shame
to be the homely
cheese
standing alone on a braided rug
breathing in sour
smells,
not the savory thyme and oregano,
not the sweet
almond, filo, and honey
of our home, my
father
leaning down to read
my page
of scrawls and doodles.
“Bird?”
he’d ask, fountain pen poised,
“What kind of
bird?”
“Chickadee,” I’d say,
or
“whippoorwill.”
Their names were their songs.
Chickadee,
his black and white head
at home in
daylight,
I could see when he sang,
his sharpened
beak writing
letters that disappeared the
instant
they were formed
on air.
Whippoorwill I knew to be
a homely bird
who sings only in the dark,
invisibly,
somewhere
in a thorny locust or fragrant
pine
so beautiful, a
little
mournful. But why
the mean picture:
whip poor Will?
I tried to think
of another pun
less punishing. If I wrote
“flowers,”
I understood to
cross it out
before Dad questioned the word,
unless
it were a verb or
arranged,
a bunch of flowers I’d picked
in our field,
dried up in a homely jar.
I’d say “tiger lilies,” seeing
their orange
blooming
around the boulder where water
pooled
after a storm.
I’d say “hollyhocks”
because when I
crossed
our dirt road to find Blanche
Bleikhart,
I passed their
sunny faces
and tall stalks propped up against
her weathered
clapboard home,
her drunk husband
bellowing behind
the walls.
I’d say “marigolds,” “pansies,”
“poppies,” and
“petunias,”
because she’d be kneeling in the
dirt,
humming
a hymn to the Green Mountains
spread above her,
a velvet veil across the temple
of sky. She
looked up
and spoke with me,
murmuring to
calico
kittens winding round her ankles
as she weeded and
harvested.
I’d say “Jack-in-the-Pulpit,”
holy and purple,
appearing
in sheltered groves, because
the bark peeled
away from birches
reminded me of the lines
of dark earth on
her knuckles,
and she gently placed some seed
pods
in my young palm,
with instructions,
a simple homily.
Because bordering the rows of
homely beans,
squash, peppers,
and tomatoes,
my elderly friend raised the
companion
flowers I’d later
learn
keep pests away from our food—
and someday I’d
grow
to be an old lady, gifted
with a green
thumb
and sunflowers three times as tall
as I stand,
shaded by a straw hat.
—in Dwelling, forthcoming with the Sheep Meadow Press, October 4, 2016.
