I don’t talk about my dad too much here. Maybe it’s because he’s gone, and so is beyond much pointed, active conversation? Or maybe it’s because it still hurts so much.
My dad was far from perfect. As far from perfect as my mother, just in another direction.
Let me just say that it’s a lucky thing that I have some of both of my parent’s good qualities and not too many of their bad ones. Without my mother’s strength and stubborn sense of purpose and independence, my inheritance of my father’s love of pleasure and comfort and ease would be detrimental. My mother is clever and psychological; my father was gentle and funny. My mother is a swimmer; my father was more of a drifter.
My mother is good at taking charge; my father radiated peace, and so on.
It was hard to face dad’s death. When I was little, and needed to remember gentle hands and a kind face, I always called my father to mind. Oh, he committed his crimes too. In my opinion, looking the other way out of laziness or plain irresponsibility or fear is just as bad as doing the harm. He didn’t support us, and ultimately, he barely supported himself. My father always needed a strong woman to help with us, whether it be an aunt, a grandmother, or a new wife, and thank god that he had a soul that made those ladies want to help. He was a charmer and a sweet person to the core, despite his apathy.

I loved my father with all my heart, and even in the midst of anger at his lack of concern for himself and lack of responsibility for us, my love for him never wavered. I thought that my heart would stop or burst when he died, and I was surprised to find that I kept living after he was gone. I guess that was 9 years ago today. I still miss him, I miss his big hugs and his great voice. I miss his good bad cooking (biscuits, grits, gravy, sausage, pancakes, scrambled eggs, or lima beans and ham hocks and collards and cornbread… mmm…). I miss his teasing me about whatever new hair adventure or boyfriend I was enduring, I miss the way his eyes looked when he told us that he loved us, and that he’d wished he’d done better by us, or that he was proud.

Today’s poem is one that I wrote a while before dad died, maybe even a few years, so he read it. And then I read it again at his “official” funeral*. It’s veryvery cheesy and mooshy (you have been warned) but I don’t care, because it is how I feel.

for daddy

Sunday mornings claim love as their own,
sleepy and blurring quiet words from the t.v.
and remote beneath my brothers’ clicking fingers.

You still call me baby,
and my Saturday night-late Scrabble mind
forgets that I am twenty-three,
and pulls me out of bed
to rest my head in the warm spot at the top of your arm
in your hug.

I will be Baby
as long as there is you to call me
to a table set with mismatched dishes,
waiting under your obligatory prayer
to fill me up
with precious waffles, sausage, eggs and biscuits
that have always meant daddy-love to me.

We eat and argue
about things that could never have a meaning
on a Sunday-breakfast morning,
half-hearted squabbles over t.v. channels
and who was where at two a.m.

I watch your brown eyes shine over the rim
of black-cup coffee
and see your pride of fatherhood
as someone reaches for another perfect biscuit.

When nothing’s left but crumbs and dishes,
I stand to wash, remembering my age
and duty.
All I say is “Thank you, daddy.”
but you know exactly what I mean.

* * *
1993

-Sam

Those of you who know how I feel about winter will get a little more out of this poem. It is one of my favorites partially because of the sentiment, and it's mythical root, but I was also proud of the form of it, the count down. I think I wrote this one in '97.

Persephone?

6 Pomegranate seeds,
6 dark months.
I sleep and draw and rehearse my lines,
and wait,
like children in the sno-kone line,
for spring.

The sheets stay still -
I like them that way - and clean.
They smell like the sun and rain
and I dream these things,
lost, happy on the sea of sleep.

Some days I wake
wanting stillness
and breakfast.
This winter diet works.

I want sun,
warm water,
and good sense...

Wisdom,
heaven,

barbecue.

My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.
-Richard Adams, Watership Down


Yesterday was a sad day. My beloved Bruffy family (Brett, Buffy, Skye and Arianna) lost one of their furry babies. Inky was truly the best cat I have ever known, and I don’t know anyone who has met “Inky-Do” who doesn’t agree. I loved my own dear Cat heart and soul. I honestly believe that she was the first creature, furry or non, that I truly loved, all the way, without any reservation, ‘til death did we part. She was a good kitty, and loved me, but I have to honestly say that she could be a bitch from hell when she wanted to. Not Inky. That cat was, as his daddy put it very plainly, a HO. He was a beautiful, long-haired, smoke-colored Himalayan. He loved to be loved, and tolerated every kind of extreme affection that humans, when faced with such a rare cat, could devise. His favorite trick with Brian was to get on the office chair and have Brian spin him around until he was drunk and then when Bri stopped the chair Inky would sort of fall of and stagger away. He loved for Brett to hold him upside down by his hind legs and rub that belly, and Ink would just hang there and purr like a small lawnmower. Buffy loved the way he sat in the high chair, upright, slumped to the side like a little middle-aged man, paws hanging down over his fluffy smoke-colored belly, nodding off while their busy life revolved around him. I loved to pick him up, belly-up and let him stretch out over my arms, he would curve all the way back and let me rub my face on his belly as much as I wanted. Mmmm, kitty belly love… He let me rub his little smushed-in nose* as much as I wanted, and he loved for me to chase him around the house. He would run by me and then wait at the foot of the stairs, or in a doorway for me to catch on or catch up… he played this game with me the last time I saw him.
That kitty is going to be missed by all of us, but I know that Brett is hurting worse than anybody. Inky was his spirit animal, mascot and homeboy**. I think the reason that Inky was such a wonderful cat is because he took after his PersonDad, and I know that Brett is probably feeling like he’s lost a part of himself. I lost Cat to the same illness that took Inky, kidney failure, and it is a hard thing. Buffy called me last night and my heart broke to hear her in her pain. Some people say that they are just animals, what’s the big deal, but those of us who love them and live with them in our homes and hearts know that they are just less troublesome children (except for all that hair). We celebrate their birthdays, give them Christmas presents and Sunday breakfast treats (Lu gets scrambled eggs) we put them in our art and consider them in all of our decisions. They are our best friends and they love us in a way that no human ever could. When we are sad, they give us a warmth and comfort that can’t be replicated in any other way, and when they leave us, they leave an empty space in us for the rest of our lives.

Inky, may the grass be long, the couches be cushy and the mice be slow, my friend. And may you find suitable laps to hold you and crazy people to chase you until we meet again.
- sam

Jubilate Agno

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry....
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.

- Christopher Smart
(this is an edited excerpt of a poem written by a man who lived from 1722-1771)

*I LOVE to rub animal noses. BIGtime.
**These are photos of kitties that look a lot like Inky.

I've been thinking about my mother, Josephine, a lot lately. Partly because I have heard news of her, partly because Mother's Day is coming up, partly because it was around this time of the year when I made the decision to have no contact with her until she agreed to talk to me about the past, and partly because Uma Thurman has been really visible lately** and Josie bears more than a passing resemblance to her - especially when she's kicking ass and taking names. I have a photo of her, she's about 30, as tiny as a child, sitting on a pew in my dad's apartment. She is wearing a beautiful sky-blue and white-trimmed v-neck ball jersey that is STILL not as blue as her eyes. Her skin is very tanned, her hair is cut short, and pale blonde, and she is smiling a little. It's my favorite picture of her, and the one I showed to Stewart and Chris to say "See? She looks just like her." They agreed. U.T. has always been my favorite actress, too, and I never considered that this might be one of the reasons...
I think about her a lot, anyway. Probably every day, almost every time I look in the mirror, or every time I do something especially hard without anyone's help. It's hard to separate he good from the bad sometimes, especially lately, since I realize that I have ceased to exist in her mind, but the fact of the matter is that she is stamped on every cell of me. (One of my closest high school friends said that I resembled Uma a little (ha!), and I said "No, I just look a little like my mother, who looks a LOT like her...")
I am proud of who I am, and so many of my best qualities, and definitely most practical, survivor qualities come from her. She is tough and clever, smart and strong, stubborn and likeable, beautiful and powerful - she is an amazing person. In fact, there have only been two things that I have ever seen or known her to be unable to do, and unfortunately they were both very important things. In my opinion, they were the most important things, but the reality of those things disappeared along with the reality of me.
I will never stop hoping that change will come, but the person closest to me in the world assured me that this was a hollow hope, and that maybe I was the wrong kind of optimist. Oh well, I could be - and have been - worse things. And maybe he'll be wrong. Wouldn't that be nice?

Today's poem is about my mother.
I wrote this in 1992.

Diving from the Leaf River train trestle

When mama told the story,
I could feel my toes
hooking around the warm edge
of the outside rail of the trestle.
The breeze from the river
must have curled up against the small of her back
and pushed a little --
I could feel the sway.

I know my spitfire mother
never jumped feet first,
tucking up like a roly-poly,
cannon-balling into the muddy water.
I think she must have spread her arms
and flexed like a baby bird,
filling her bony ribcage
with green summer air.

(Here, I held my breath
and shivered a little,
knowing she wouldn't
change her mind...)

Springing up
on the balls of her feet,
trigger release,
arcing into the open space
like a short, white rainbow -
did she even have time to squint
at the sun on the surface
before her thin body wedged
into the water?

Cold,
then nothing more
than a second
before she curved along
the slick river bottom
and, flexing again,
arced back toward the sky.

***

Happy mother's day to all of you. Hug your mothers if you can, and if you see mine, hug her big, and twice, but don't tell her the second one's from me, her non-existent kid.
-Sam


* when Brian met Autumn (my cousin, Josie's niece), the VERY first thing he asked her about was the story of her pulling the gun on the sheriff when she was only 17 and veryvery pregnant with me...
**MAN, is 'Kill Bill' a good movie, too.

Hi peeps.
Y’all have no idea how sweet it is when I tell someone that I have done something, or thought about something and have him or her say “I know, I read your rant.”
I’ve written here before about the apparent weight and value of my words when I was growing up. It’s funny. A lot of what I said was discounted, either out of lack of concern, or simply to discredit my veracity in order to cover their own @$$e$, but then if I told any one of my adult-folks that they should be extra careful on the river or road or in the woods that day, they would take great precautions because of their belief in my ‘insight’.*
Maybe that’s why I write and talk and draw/paint about how I feel so much. Because I want to be heard, and because I’ve never really been sure that I actually have anything to say. I was shut up and discounted for so long that now I want to just pour out my heart, whatever the consequences to me, and it really is the sweetest thing when someone comments on what I’ve written here, or something I’ve said to them. Even if they disagree, I know they’ve listened, and so many times people say that I have touched them or made them think, and that means all the world to me. It makes me seriously consider the value of my words, and try to make them count.

Thank you for reading, thank you for your comments (yes, Mike, even you…), thank you for believing that I have something worth saying.

Here’s another poem (don’t worry, I’m running out fast. : ) This is dedicated to Nina Simone** who is my favorite blues singer. She was born and raised here, about 1/16 of a mile from my house, or less, if you cut through the woods. When the local Community Foundation built a new park in Tryon, they asked me to come and read this poem at the dedication ceremony. Considering what this poem is really saying, that was pretty brave and bold of them.
I think this is the best poem I have ever written.

Nina

You sing to me
when the hurt is so deep
that nothing else can touch it.
Your voice is rough and strong,
like my fathers hand resting on my back,
weighted heavy with long years
of understanding ache.

You know the burdens
of love and salvation,
the sound of grief
at the bottom of a glass,
and you talk to me, soul sister,
any time I need to hear.

Sundays,
I walk past the place
where you slept and dreamed
of other lives, of freedom.
I imagine that you came this way,
swinging your arms,
singing softly to the graveyard.

Did you sit here
on your steps and cry so loud
that all the Mill Village
dogs would howl,
but not another human could hear you?
I hear it, and I howl too.

Now, all the wealthy white men –
actors, poets and politicians –
have their names plastered
on every other building.
Not one of them knows me,
or you, or cares.
Civic pride has a limit, I suppose.

I know you won’t come home –
I can’t blame you.
I came here to get away from home.
But your voice still rings down Markham,
across Scriven creek valley,
and gives me courage to face another day here.

My civic pride says:
“She got out.
Will I ever?”
It also says:
”Of all the things I’ve found here,
I am most proud of you and I.”


* * *
Big love,
-Sam


*Hm. Maybe I should’ve tried telling someone that I’d had a psychic vision that my stepfather was gonna’ beat my ass and lock me in a shed with nothing to eat or drink.
‘Sorry. I guess some things you STAY a little mad about, always.

**btw, Nin(k)a, she’s who was playing as I was placing the incense around yours and Jerels wedding pavilion. :)