Tonight's Poet Corner: To My Father

To My Father
by Belinda Roddie

The moments you manage to smile in pictures
are precious; your beard is Father Time's hue,
but the blue glint in your eyes is timeless.
Your Pendletons and Birkenstocks are the pinnacle
of California style. Your UC Santa Cruz
banana slug tee shirts: Heirlooms. I want one.

When you worry, your eyebrows, above all else,
give the game away. You are not subtle
in the slightest, and maybe, ultimately,
that's where I got my own candor from.

Truth is often understated, but you and I
expose our personal stories on our hands
and faces. When we drink coffee and
hot cocoa together, we will wince when
the brew scalds our tongues, and we will
tattoo our wishes and woes on our skin,
the ink as fragile as the paper napkins
we wipe our mouths with. You are nearly

sixty-six, and our lives are spelled out in
tripulets and triads, just like the patterns
you trill on the slender neck of your flute.
You treat her so gently, producing poetry
that you can both be proud of.

She missed your touch during all those years
you sat behind a computer, making sure that
big brother, twin sister, and I could fill
our bellies with good food, cram our brains with
solid educations, and season our spirits with jazz.

When I dream of family, I picture like oil on canvas
your arms cradling the swathed silhouette
of my future child. Your rough lips make
themselves at home on the cotton candy
hair, threads smelling sweet on baby's head.
In my mind, baby giggles, reaches outward,

pulls on the mustache that Mom wishes
you would shave off. You say it adds
ten years to you, but the chuckles that
rumble from your gut are what make
you look even younger than ever to me. I
imagine you playing interludes from

"Peter and the Wolf" - the bird and the cat -
on flute and clarinet to my future toddlers, who
will sing along in perfect pseudo-coherent prose.
And I hope that you and your grandchildren
can make laughter and music together.

Remember (and I know I've said this
to you before): When they ask how you
got the scar on your stomach, don't tell
them it was something boring, like invasive
gallbladder surgery. Tell them that
Grandpa fought a bear - and the bear lost.

Where I teach, too many of my students
can no longer write their fathers' names
in their personal narratives unless it's in
past tense. I thank whatever fates or forces
of nature that reside in this microcosm of
an orchard we've cultivated that your roots
still hold firm in our family tree's soil.

I want you to live a retirement that's long but still
worth gold in substance, like stretching bubble
gum from a sticky mouth and praying that
its elasticity holds without snapping. I want
you to share anecdotes over a gin and tonic,

or a watered down glass of whiskey, or Shiraz
at the downtown winery, and retell them as
much as you can whenever new stitches appear in
their tapestries. I want you to feel like you can play
percussion with your inner demons, strike their
heads like drums with mallets that leave divots
in the skulls of your doubts and reservations.

I want peace, calm, and happiness for you, the kinds
you can find during walks to the café with friends, or
while swaying a crowd with your sterling silver muse.
I want the kisses you exchange with my mother
to be as sweet, yet just as exhilarating, as the cream
you swirl into your morning joe like a pearly white

sunrise. And when I inevitably pester
you for more pictures, I want to see you smile,
at least behind your eyes, which glimmer like
a pair of stars holding hands during
one of your concert bands' sweet symphonies.