Thanks to Al, Leif, and Elloban for helping me tighten it up from its rough draft in the space of a few days. The effort was appreciated more than I can say. I wish I'd been able to do more with it, but time's out, and after giving it to my grandmother today, there will be no more changes.
Kenneth
Taller than life to the young,
towering overhead,
pale blue eyes and fiery temper.
Skin creased and thick as leather,
red with sun.
Flannel shirts and beer,
sandpaper stubble,
rough as your cats’ tongues.
More enigma than I wish,
once sailor, warrior, in the time of the
Second global fray.
How hard to hold a gun
and know it might be against your fellows.
It never found but the briefest words,
the role you played that day,
steering a small ship packed with men
to land on stone shores.
From destruction to creation,
rough hands made rougher by turning them
to a carpenter’s work.
Creation, building.
The wonders that sprang forth in wood,
in glass, in metal.
Adorned with stain, with paint,
varnish and shine.
Driving through San Jose,
find the building of gold and black,
where so many are silver,
are white or gray or brown.
I point it out to my passengers and say
“My grandpa built that.”
As if you were the only man to do so.
My childhood was rich,
a fortune in diamonds laying
in tiny sparkling bits on the driveway,
the remnants of windowpanes.
A cascade of gold nuggets,
showering to cool on the concrete,
the aftermath of solder.
The blackening of asphalt from
the truck frame’s birth
became my hopscotch square.
Gifts of tarantulas
rescued from the highway.
Kept a few days,
then released.
The lesson to let go.
Presiding over family affairs
and day to day life
from the corner and your chair.
Traits tangled in a celtic knot of life and living.
So much of the food eaten
grown in the backyard,
rescued from endless skirmishes
with gophers.
The snap of tape measure returning home,
the first sign of change.
Sawdust and red pencils
the wake of your passage.
The garage a sacred domain
strewn with purpose.
I wish I’d known your stories.
A heyday of hunting, of laughter, of brass.
A book of decisions, good and bad,
roadmap of efforts.
By blood, by bonds, by any means
a bridge between family lines.
Tarnished, shining, weak and strong,
what’s remembered is not the method
but the measure of the man.
