Under one of those seamless summer skies,
Or in trees whose low branches invited
A good climb and a comfortable seat.
From there she viewed the world as only she could;
Child monarch, with the reign of a season.
With a choice of memories to be made,
She abdicated this throne of childhood
To journey with the man in overalls,
Whose scent was always that of dust and wood,
Whose view was always to a creation,
Whose half-creation followed him that day.,
To a house; solid, but aged and creaking
In spots where it had collected the steps
Of all that walked their history through it;
And told their tales in its groans and echoed
Empty for the day. Yet to her, whispered
Of lives that filled it in other hours
In a boy's unmade bed and the coffee
Still warm in the cup, near by the paper.
The carpenter starts his work, fashioning
New constructions to store the stuff of lives,
Frameworks for the memories they will make.
The child's hand proud when occasionally
Called in to hold a level, or steady
A two-by-four cut to exact measure.
The carpenter lives for accuracy;
His joy, the beauty found in a plumb line.
His child's hand ready to assist the work
But when unbeckoned, bangs at the upright
In the parlor. That which might properly
Be called a Living room, when in it is
Clementine played so haphazardly and
Joyfully on a day that could be spent
Breathlessly run out along stream and field,
Chasing clouds under a wedgewood sky.
Days will come when memory starts to fade.
When the carpenter forgets a kettle
He has set to boil. He remembers not
The gathering where final goodbyes said
And the flowering of a limousine
Mean his wife will not be returning home.
The names and the times of his past return;
Melding in a hazy place, where he
Keeps these lives, and tells his stories; where he
Plays a fiddle on a Saturday night,
The horse that bit his shoulder, and the field
Needs plowing and the potatoes brought in.
This treasured memory of the man, who
Taught her the lessons of pride and work and
The true application of a hammer -
The child now grown, holds up like a mirror;
Measures her life against the memory
Of a man whose measures were always true.
And now grown old, knows that she too, will pass
Into the years and fade from memory;
And the day that she held so lovingly
Will be gone with the last one who knew it.
But the sturdy construction of his hands
Will outlast the years that overcome flesh,
Beyond her time will continue to stand
Silently holding that day forever.
(My Father's passport photo)
