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