Dad’s Last Punt
So drunk,
you had somebody drive you home
from the office.
I heard mom
say thank you and the sound of a car door
shut.
You stumbled
into the backyard and
grabbed that ball
from me, spun it in your hands
feeling for the lace,
fingers yellow
from cigarettes, telling me to
go long.
Punting
in dress shoes isn’t easy,
especially when all hopped up.
Your leg was in the air,
higher than a father’s should go.
You grimaced
as your ass hit the ground,
got right back up.
But Dad, boy
did that ball fly!
It crested the roof
of the house and caught daylight’s
last glimmer.
Even the dog
perked her ears.
And there I was
in the middle of the yard,
looking up at the sky,
waiting to cradle the ball as it hit
my chest.
Face on the Floor
When I lean over to pick up toys,
my notebook falls from my shirt.
Loose papers fan out
across the hardwood.
I see my son’s face on a battlefield
in the pages on the floor.
You think I would learn,
but I have no other pockets.
When the loose pages scatter,
there is my son, face down.
I quickly pick them up,
and shuffle the whole mess back
into my breast pocket,
fighting back the horrible image.
I return to picking up the house:
Legos, books, blocks, cars—
my back grows stiff
picking up all this stuff,
thinking about dinner, the bills,
the war thirteen years from now.
Art Information
- "Constellation 1" © Adria Arch
Eric Wayne Dickey’s poems and translations have been published in Rhino, West Wind Review, and International Poetry Review. He's received a grant from the John Anson Kittredge Fund and is a Vermont Studio Center Fellow. He co-edits Pacifica: Poetry International, formerly To Topos.
Eric lives in Corvallis, Oregon. He has entered a daily tweet of exactly 140 characters, Monday through Friday, since June 2009; you can follow him at twitter.com/MePoet.
