When I think of you
Daddy,
still to this day I see you in
overcoat and fedora,
newspaper under your arm,
breath visible in the cold,
coming down the sidewalk from the
train station--
I would run to meet you, overjoyed.
Years later,
post-divorce, me a
21-year-old
home from overseas.
I stayed with you
and your new wife
that stranger, and you Daddy,
you a stranger too
in the unfamiliar sprawl of L.A.
You took me with you to
Santa Anita racetrack
with the beautiful thoroughbreds
ambling
in their easy gait, the jockeys
leaning forward
as if already running the next race.
I was looking
at the odds board and then you were gone.
I waited as the horses with their
strange wonderful names
finished race after race,
feeling lost, and sad, then angry.
I still regret how I spoke to you
when you finally appeared
but you took it all with a funny smile.
Years later I realized
that you had gone to call the new wife.
You just
couldn't be away from her, for me.
Daddy, I don't know who you turned into.
My adored father
became someone who lived
with plastic over the furniture
and the Lakers on tv.
Oh for a ballgame with you
at Tiger Stadium
or another trip to the DIA
to see Diego Rivera's mural.
I would run to you, overjoyed,
but you are gone,
just a sad California memory.
__________________________
for Dverse Poetics "Left In The Lurch" hosted by my friend Dora.
Music: The Pretenders Back on the Chain Gang
Oh, I feel this....the way a child just wants her daddy, but how changed the dads are trying to appease the new wife and somehow incorporate the child from the first marriage. The setting comes through so strongly.......the child's need, and sad bewilderment...the plastic covers on the furniture (oh my goodness!)........just so sad, Shay. Must parents always disappoint their children? It sometimes seems so.
ReplyDeleteDear Shay, I read this poem several times already, and each time tasting a new layer of melancholy, disillusionment, loss, so sensitized do your words leave us to nuances of sound, image, emotion. The structure intrigues me, and I wondered why it worked so well, so I read it once more, and I realized the broken lines-- like the broken heart-- make us catch our breath in a half-sigh, half-sob, involuntarily drawn, released. Maybe I'm overthinking?! But maybe not. I just know this is poetry, and it moves me to tears. I don't know which is worse, our sorrow for what could have been or our pain over what was.
ReplyDeletesad and true.... wonderful poem, shay. a rollercoaster of emotions, from a child and I love the part of the plastic covered furniture. can relate. Jane
ReplyDeleteA stunning poem, Shay, which reminds me of Sylvia Plath. The portrait you paint of Daddy in the opening stanza is so clear and cinematic, as if you focused a lens and zoomed in on him, so that the following stanzas come as quite a shock, where he is now a stranger. But then, people change.
ReplyDeleteWe form our images of our parents, and our emotions tangled up with those images when we are so young and pure and fresh. For good or ill, that is who they will always be to us. This tale tells the common story of outgrown relationships, loss and betrayal we too often find at the parental door. (And at many others.) In the end, the good memories and the moments we felt close and loved are all we have to nourish us from their peripatetic ghosts. Gently and with such sadness still you show us how time and life never stand still, yet moments in those deep first memories cannot be ever totally lost. I love the symbols of the racehorses and Tigers here.
ReplyDeleteAn extraordinary poem. I love the enjambment ❤️❤️
ReplyDeleteOh, Shay, wow. Though this is written with specificity in your personal relationship experience, you write it in a way in which we can relate it to our own. And it is deeply affecting, because in your signature way, you get vulnerable with us in your poems. I love that. The themes of love, disappointment, abandonment--all part of our very human experience, are wrapped up exceptionally in this work you do as poet. To say this fine and important and work does not do it justice. Pure poetry.
ReplyDelete*To say this is fine and important work does not do it justice.
ReplyDeleteHaha, there we go :-)
It is said that the best poems are written when we go to our inner thresholds, where we love and hurt the most, and this poem is testament to that. It told your story so keenly and that feeling of disconnect came across so strongly, when someone you thought you knew feels like a stranger all of a sudden. Such a powerful moving poem, Shay.
ReplyDeleteThis is so thought provoking and a bit scary, the future is always before us but where will it lead. It makes everything uncomfortable !
ReplyDeleteThis is so sad. When people disappoint you, it's one thing, but when a parent disappoints you it is so much more devastating.
ReplyDelete