dad didn't weather the storms of my youth
without making him senior white
fifteen like martian rays pulled me into the mothership
did a craniectomy inserting their probe
the shear winds of peer pressure took hold
with the nattering of teachers ideas
the gorge became a canyon
dad and me shouted and scuffled
a whipper snapper pontificating
to the pontiff high and low-pressure
thunderclaps
many years passed - the earlier memories
found the lens again
dad adopted two boys
forty-two-years older than me
i was the elder son given the junior title
dad often played catch with baseballs and footballs
brother and me often made his seven foot lanky legs run
a baritone voice radio announcer for cleveland
dad raised us like a dad should
but from the ages of fifteen to twenty one
a grade-school boy meted out the withering grades
dad blew it plenty - me more
but this morning while yawning out of the sack
remembered the beech wood tree
dad'd say, wanna go ride the beech wood tree?
two boys three feet tall next to his loping seven
crackling thru the backwoods brush we were told
to hold the branch so as not to snap the one behind
and to find walking sticks
the big tree loomed huge in front
a jutting lower branch we could ride
as if a horse
dad pulling up and down












3.6 10/10
© Brian Peter Hodgkinson