Harvest Time

Thanksgiving, my grandfather required my hand under his arm to step towards the lavatory

Left leg shaking, cane in right, my thirty-eight-year-old stance as brace

He says, “I cannot see.  Point me in the right direction.”

Lead dog for the hunt of a geriatric prostate for that elusive drip of piss

Flabby white thighs, octogenarian-tailored zipper shifted to the right side

For a cardiac-risk male gut bulbous tire rolling and strapped

Like a leashed haggard dog growly rock-toothed and snarling

I will be the death of you

Twist asshole trajectory to bullseye plop-down lowered crane-like

Between my arms to his pulling elastic band briefs off of buttocks

Revealing the lunar light of where we all phase

Huffing, staring at feet, saying, “I should have stayed home.” 

Bring up Saints football, penis hooded by stomach fat

Mission launch failure, no urine, raise spine, button and zipper operation

Hold up pants, help stand, reassemble trousers

Belt the beast to keep to plow

Pace out to the living room, see my father talking about Trump

My dad’s hunting long bow like Odysseus on the wall, made of swamp wood

Old man strength to string, fire through rings, his grandfather’s bull’s horn to blow

To echo off the swamp waters for the Catahoula’s to hunt, when a deer was split

I see his retired hand gripping a coffee cup, standing on the home rock like a cowboy playing Indian

Naming things with white mustached lips under the crucifix doorway, bald

With the gun safe in the closet and the gun safe in the bedroom, the pistol in the pickup truck cab compartment

Conversations like, “I would never go to Chicago.”

Rooted for the cartoon Indians over the Cubs in the World Series in October

Voted red again in November

With my mother, uncles, aunts, cousins, everyone, but my brothers and me

Says, "It used to be simple when I was a kid.  We had men and women’s bathrooms. 

We didn’t have to learn all that.  None of that existed."

There comes a point in growing up where you realize

Your relationship with your parents has transposed

You can no longer speak as if seeking advice or drink from that well of knowledge

The intransigence of what is has calcified into sedimentary silence

Layered and petrified bow is non pliable or malleable to function in a modern world

The digital fairies pilfering daily interface into the way of meat on bodies in motion

The connection between seed to tree to archer to bloody deer to factory to truck to store

To bank accounts trading ones and zeros for Pfizer and Flomax

Into the fossil fuels goading the sun for the life of dancing bees buzzing the sweetness of roses

Circling in a dizzy-head bumble symphony wanting to stand firm in the front door

Letting the impasse clog into a baby boomer colon watching a 1950’s childhood

Grab America by the pussy in 2016

Start a trade war on anti-intellectualism

Obama tolerating water cannons on indigenous protestors in the irony of just above 32 degrees Fahrenheit

In North Dakota because Northern Hemisphere November is just that bit warmer and thus

The whole reason we are here

And do not talk anymore

The horizon of silence has dawned

So I realize I have begun to talk to my father the way we talk to my grandfather

I do not expect him to understand

Me, nor the context, the sphere of the setting, the planet, the economics, the psychological approach

To why humanity is where we are, the leaves have fallen from the oak

Dry acorns pelting the base, waiting for the deer to come to eat

I know he is a man who has planted more trees

Than I probably ever will. 

Lob-loly and long leaf pines, pecan, old hickory

Tax deductions for hunting property and his grandchildren’s college fund in loving timber

More likely forced to shed to qualify for healthcare; I know there is love in his heart, misguided in application

His eyes salivating to string the bow, hungering to harvest

The cycle of herbivores and shaved rocks crafted into arrow heads

Tractor wheels and gasoline, iPhones and internet tree stand surveillance

To track the herd, the outliers and the general health

Seeing the scrawny and wanting the does to get enough clover and nuts

Cultivating trails and pastures, coming inside turning on Fox News

Gripping bullets and Bible pages, judgment of thirty years of Hillary

As if it hasn’t been men like Donald this whole time

The billionaire’s exemption is somehow safer  

Three degrees and novel Nebraska dustbowl revival

Queue Woody Guthrie on the Victrola

Turkey feathers and blaming California

Dipstick the aquifers for parched almond orchards 

Hippy pot and tax coffers, transgender dystopian blues songs

White crosses on the church lawn and I want to smash them all

Robes and court seats, anti-choices reversing mainstream

The only way I can talk to them anymore

Seems to be not talking

To treat my parents as children and pretend the world was always great

Always simple and give up baubles of faith and hope of their aliveness

My father feels a marathon bursting the ribbon upon his chest

Three sons and, three grandchildren, wife, partners for two kids

And in why can’t we just keep our focus here, on family

I do not want to talk. 

His blessed doing of a god

That is dead to me

Instead there is an interconnected energy that I know growth comes from pain

The forest needs to burn

A man on fire attempting to sleep on a sofa

Head throbbing laughing off suicidal ghosts

For longer than I can recollect, but especially now

Part of me has been infected with my parent’s myopic apathy

Drinking this cup is to see their death ferment

And in psychological ladder rung parents die before children

As some ordained expected genial order

The octogenarian asks to return to the restroom

He thinks he has a drip now

Get up again. 

We walk on five legs.

Dad stands munching straddled in the open front door way

Singing, “Imagine there is no bacon.  It is easy if you try.”

Dog walks up from the porch

“Too Late I ate it all”