Father’s Day 2013

I wanted to be a husband and a father more than anything growing up.

After you those sound like the most frightening things on Earth.

You taught me children can be used as weapons

Against a father

Like a sword where the mother’s hand is wrapped

In an umbilical strand around the hilt

A father has two choices: to hold the blade as still as can be

Trembling between his bleeding palms cupping the metal or run

For escape imagining his heart is with him and not impaled upon a spit

Beating blindly compartmentalized into a stereotypical hirsute organ

Drenched in the commercial antonym to testosterone for air play of

Palatable definitions of heroes and heroines; ogres and princesses; Shrek taught us nothing.

Every time I pull out of that driveway I feel a little bit of the carcass stir

In my lungs like floating shrapnel of civil war the blackened crust bends off like pastry flecks

Of an ignored toaster left to singe the morning despite the winter snow the flour burns

I see our daughter’s face, the embrace upon the departure growing in an imbalanced scale

At four she hid under the sofa from me, stuck to your leg like a tree frog

Dragging out the drama of transition as hope of you and me were salvageable as connected parents

Sealed in what father knows to stand as Buddha-like patient for the pillory

I took her claws to my flesh as recompense for what cannot be explained

Without the speed of trees rather than humans and so I became oak

So she has always been my acorn and the equilibrium shifts as she is of twice her age then

The rings have circled and approaching nine she senses the time drained in memories

Of hours away from her father, wanting to be, yet evicted from his own family

The crime of having testicles and inversely no vagina for it is of obvious miraculous-occurrence

Before family court that it is the more common feat 
For a mother to produce the beatitudes of a scrotum

Than a father to be able to conjure the blessedness of a uterus; I understand.

Rolling into the deep of that driveway we built, the spires of the house grinning

Your Tuesday-night one-year dating-next year husband with your one and a half-year son waving

It is harder for you to hide it from her on Father’s day now; he may assistant coach her little league

You may tell her, “Dad is going to get your batting bag from the dugout.”

As I stand behind her motionless as you nary a flinch of impropriety; I swallow. I root.

The rings grow with joy that words are swallowed by time and drank as water to sustain 

I may taste the charcoal muscle of an old-life as I set foot to the concrete of that driveway

Wandering into your town like Woody as I ain’t got no home in this world  anymore

But this is not about now; this has always been about her reaching her own canopy

Above whatever you tried to make  

This weekend I cooked her red beans and sausage on Sunday dinner,

because we may never have a Monday and it ain’t work.

We read past page two hundred of the third Harry Potter novel and she knows

One day in time we will have read every word, just like we did through Narnia.

And every trip to the library for her card I still hold in my wallet like a badge of honor.

I brought her to her B.F.F.’s sleepover ninth birthday that her mother plans on the weekend

She knows I have our daughter, after five years ago when you neglected to tell me

And I got a phone call asking what happened, because I didn’t know

because another house had the invitation; children never forget.

This weekend we finished Kirby’s Dream Land epic yarn adventure on our Wii 

We played every board and defeated every dragon and evil penguin; I will be her Prince Fluff.

We road to my aunt’s and saw my father.  I set a piece of apple pie in front of him without word

As she wanted apple pie over chocolate ice cream cake knowing her father never eats chocolate.

I saw her taste buds staring up at me salivating

We lay on the floor playing with her Scooby Doo Mystery Machine.

She is the hungry-hound.  I am Freddie assisted by Daphne.

I know why Velma and Shaggy are left in the back of the van together.

Our past Halloween outfits say it all; this kid processes everything

Freud ain’t got jack on what we be talkin’ about before bedtime, processing, hugging,

Because daddy knows why when he is fixing dinner with just her and me

And she somehow manages to roll off the sofa with a sprained ankle 
And nothing will cure it but a kiss

And she moans and grows angry that I do not immediately run to save her and make a passion play

Over her ailment dropping the sausage to let it burn in the pan, yet I stand.

Hearing her cry to me for those moments of consternation, knowing she must live her life

And after a space of balance I come to her and hold her gently, I kiss the wounded knee.

I whisper in her ear, “Daddy knows.  I understand it is Sunday evening.   

Soon time to go back.  Daddy loves you.   
I always will even when I cannot see you daddy loves you more than you could ever know.    
But you do not need to do all this to get my attention, just ask for a hug.” 
I embrace her and say, “Dinner is on the table.”

I bring her to her milk and natural legumes.   
We eat to the sounds of the Avett Brothers and Bob Dylan.

We pick up the Mystery Machine and Nintendo controllers.  Books are back on the shelf.   

Her still not four-foot-nine booster sits into that Ponchatoula driveway and 
I ride to New Orleans.  Growing.