When I Lost My Father

When I Lost My Father            
           
May was about to pass into June          
Red clover was in bloom            
in the fields around Natchez, Mississippi            
Honeysuckle vines grew on the fences and trees          
Whose flowers were picked by Children        
To pinch off the bottom            
and taste the sweetness within  
   
“But my blackberry harvest came
long after Dad roamed    
The blueberry barrens of Maine  
In the solitude of his shyness  
When time was a cool breeze  
With Grammie carrying the bucket  
For a Fourth of July pie  
Whose taste he still remembered  
In his lonely years  
When even tears were not his to own  
In the solitude of his heart      
 
In his dreams, Dad was a Ghost rider  
On the Boston and Maine railroad  
Traveling the tracks from Saco to Nantucket  
But his toy train set  
Took him to a Haymarket station of the mind  
Where he rode the rails to Lowell  
Only to discover his father  
Making blueprints of the soul  
While teaching mechanical drawing  
As Dad one day dreamed of doing”  
           
“Father gasped for mercy from heaven            
In asthmatic prayers, ragged as a hobo’s coat”          
           
When wildflower summer            
Was a powwow princess          
In Iroquois regalia            
Whose songs haunted the night            
Where birds flocked from raven skies
Beloved held my hand            
On the dusky pillars of time            
In peace of burning sage
 
Singer from a northern tribe            
Poured her voice into the night            
Like a soft shawl shadow            
On the forgotten grass            
Of an Indian burial ground            
Where bones lay sleeping            
Under the evening boughs            
Where my sweetheart stood gazing            
Into the beginning of time            
Where even death could not follow    
 
“Heavenly butler greeted father at the door          
Where sorrows were left          
Like the dust on a jacket          
Swept away forevermore”