(inhonor)

I want to thank you
that I got to live
in a pretty house,
one with French doors
and crystal knobs.
I want to thank you
for the hardwood floor
you laid, matching
the grain with precision.
I want to thank you
for all the pretty dresses,
the shoes.
For getting to go to
the beauty shop on
Saturdays.

I want to thank you
for coming to my defense,
for shooting the rooster
who nearly put out my eye.
For picking me up in
my yellow dotted Swiss
to carry me over the
puddles on my first
day of school.

I want to thank you
for all you meant to teach
that I never learned,
for trying to set me on
a straight course,
although I never traveled it.
I want to thank you for
setting a standard,
always shooting for the
highest mark.

I want to thank you
for the day you asked
did I find what I wanted,
for that last brief talk
about marriage.
And the time we went
to Wappapello,
’cause you wanted to make
me happy and didn’t
know how.
I want to thank you
for being sweet
in your last years, for finally letting me
love you, though you said
I’d ruin you rotten,
and feared I know
the leaving.
I did too.
I picked you
wildflowers and brought
them to your little room,
you always called it
my mowing, the way
I loved to walk
down country roads
gathering.

I want to thank you
for that walk we took
through the pasture
where you lived with
your last wife, the
way you said it’d make
a pretty place to put
a house.
For the word cattywonkish,
meaning, you said, crooked
to the world, that is
not parallel to what is
around it.
That’s how I turned out.
I want to thank you for
your picturesque speech,
which often shocked me
but helped me in my trade.
You used the word proud
for bowel movements and
things like that,
and when we stood at
someone’s grave you
said the sun was beating
down on my withers
and made me feel
just like a horse.
I want to thank you
for all the words you
used I never understood,
words like joist,
the language of building
and growing,
for knowing the kinds of dirt,
the names of trees,
all the songbirds singing.

I want to thank you
for how you taught me to be loyal and true
in what you did,
for saying, “take care
of your mother,”
For being the one
who gave to your dead
brother’s kids, to visiting
city cousins, ponies and
cars and houses,
to whoever needed them,
until you sold that farm
’cause you didn’t
want to lay down at
night owing somebody
money.

My mother said, I heard,
of your next place,
“He just bought that
farm for the house.”
I want to thank you,
it was so pretty,
it helped me become
who I am. My upstairs
room with the pink
Priscilla curtains,
which trained me into
needing the long view,
the necessity of
horizon.
A poet’s room
I’d say, with American
Girl Magazine and Nancy
Keene paper dolls.
I want to thank you
for those too.
I want to thank you
for driving my cousin
Brenda home in the
blizzard, a thing I
would have never
pictured.

I want to thank you
for paying by the pound
to move my magazines and
books when things got
hard.
You set such an exacting
measure, I never felt
I could please you.
I know now it
was your nature.
It’s hard still to say so, but I want to
thank you for that too.

I took the longest time
to get to the least little
bit. I want to thank you
for the way you used
the word least to mean
youngest, for telling me
the least sad the easiest
mended, when I needed
relationship advice.
For the way you said
you better light somewhere,
which I still say to myself,
when that is the counsel
needed.

I want to thank you
for what I called
the old paternal
360, the way you’d
roll your eyes,
when I did something silly,
like dying my hair
coal black
at age fourteen.

I want to thank you
for thanking me
for the little bit
I did, when I forgot
to say it.
I want to thank you
for your strong back,
your labor.
“You have such pretty
hands,” the lady said
who filed your nails
at the last.
“Cause I don’t do anything,”
you answered.
Who knows what your
hands might have chosen
had they been given
more choice.

Though my brother
still brags about
the crop yield you
could get.
“Was he an architect
really?” my sister says.
My brother thinks engineer.
With hands like those
I think you were
a musician, an artist
maybe.
That’s why you needed
a pretty house.
A Venus person like me,
the only two in the family.
It seems we should have
understood each other,
but something got in
the way, that kept
us at cross purpose.
But I stood up for you
for wanting your clothes
just right, and waited
patiently while you
explained the fastidious
plans you had for making
the bed.
And then there
was the way you liked
your socks folded,
we cannot say enough
about method.
I want to thank you
for that.

You stayed young
the longest time,
you were 45 forever,
and stunned us when
you suddenly got old
and almost died.
But three days later
you were out stacking
wood. You had the
biggest garden then.
And a wife who wouldn’t
let you water it.

In my father’s world
no hinge is ever
squeaky, I said one
time. I like a world
like that. And have
not found another one
since.

“I got too old,” you said
new kids at forty-five-five,
“I didn’t have any
patience.” Confided to my brother,
“It was a living hell
the last few years of
your mother’s life.”
I don’t know what
made you say it,
but you stuck by
her to the end. When
she could hardly
move through the house,
you got up and cooked
breakfast before you went
to work, and dinner
when you came back.
Not like the husband
the rest of us got.

I want to thank you
for packing up her china
to move back after
she died, that view
I got through
the kitchen window
coming home from
the dance that told
me your life.
I want to hank you
for giving me her bells,
her silver, the few
things you saved.

All the people who
never said thanks,
praise you now
for what you did
for them, for your
intelligence and
generosity.
And how you moved
Grandpa’s barn,
marking board by board
from his farm to yours.
I wish they’d told you then,
I wish they’d helped
you when you needed
it. I wish you had
been able to ask.

“Daddy wasn’t a very
scrappy fellow,”
my little brother said.
“He would just walk
away and let things go.”
You were a gypsy in your blood I think,
I bet that’s where
I got it, but settled
down with my mother
and never wandered
far again.

All the widow ladies
like you best ’cause
you were handsomer
than all the rest,
and made you quilts
and jam to prove it.
You got a hard row
to hoe the day you
eloped with my mother,
not because of who
she was,
but what came later
when the worse got
the better of better.
And when she was gone
you kept trying to find
another. A bad idea
my brother said, you
should have put that
energy into work,
into re-building.
You never made it back
to where you’d been
after you sold it all
when the doctor said
she had to move
to keep on living.
It didn’t suit you
working for someone else –
no, I would not think so
either.
Life puts us through a lot
of stuff, you complained
constantly about the little
things but never said a word
about the real costs.

I want to thank you for
the little knife that
had been your uncle’s,
a boyish thing I
would not have gotten
on my own.
I want to thank you
for our last picnic,
your trembling
hands chasing food across the plastic plate.

I always thought
if you eve died
I’d have to get
married right away.
You lived long
and I stayed single.
But when I relented
you were gone
in just over a month.
I always felt
to blame,
and wanted to say if
you waited to see
that I was safe
you left too soon.

I want to thank you
for letting me sit
with you while you died,
to hear your last secrets.
Of how your worried
about your mules
and the baby was
in the road.
I think you meant
my brother, the time
you spanked him
for sitting down
in the highway.
I want to thank you
for letting me rub
your feet,
with the holy water my sister
sent.
For that last touch
of your hand.

11/2//99