Professional Poet's Exemplar
"My Father in His Twenty-Second
Year"
"Only
Thirty Years More"
Devin found a
picture of his mother and aunt playing as children and decided to
use it in writing this poem.
The picture is a special one as Devin’s mom died 4 years ago.
Two girls, two dolls
Two
lives left to unfold
This
way that way
Their
futures still untold
Innocence
here
Complications
there
No
children, just dolls
No
lover, just each other
Doctor,
teacher
Aunt,
mother
Decorator
of interiors
This
yet is to be said for sure.
Thirty
years left
Or
is it eighty years to go?
Only
time will tell such things.
One
child born
And
maybe one child more.
Only
fate will show a wedding ring.
Time
has come
And
also told
For
the one of you, my mother
Only
thirty years more did unfold
A
husband sighs
A
daughter cries
A
son wipes his eyes
As
three different teardrops fade
This
photo’s dyes.
"A
Piece of the Past"
While
getting ready to write this parent poem, Mandy found a picture of her
dad as a senior in high school, right before he became a father at
18 years of age. When she wrote this poem as a senior herself, Mandy hadn’t seen her dad
in 15 years.
A journey comes to mind
When
I look at his face.
It’s
a journey of life,
A
never-ending race.
A
loss comes to mind
When
I look into his eyes.
The
loss of a daddy
As a result of compromise.
Your
boyish physique
Though
not very tall.
I
once sat on that knee
And
you gave me a doll.
There’s
a great similarity
In
both of our noses.
How
can I forget
You
bought my first roses!
It’s
been so many years
Since
I’ve seen you last.
Yet
you will always be
A
piece of my past.
Photograph
of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year
October
.
Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen
I study my father's embarrassed young man's face.
Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string of spiny yellow
perch,
in the other a bottle of Carlsbad beer.
In jeans and denim shirt,
he leans against the front fender of a 1934 Ford.
He would like to pose bluff and hearty for his posterity,
wear his old hat cocked over his ear. All his life my father wanted to
be bold.
But the eyes give him away, and the hands that limply
offer the string of dead perch and the bottle of beer.
Father, I love you, yet how can I say thank you,
I who can't hold my liquor either, and don't even
know the places to fish?
-- Raymond Carver