Dad's Birthday

My dad's birthday was yesterday. I can't believe he's been gone for six years. Here are 2 poems I wrote about this extraordinary man.

Leather and Old Spice

Leather and Old Spice

Saved my life

Wrapping wiry arms

Around a drowning girl

With not enough sense

To put her own feet down

From cold blue water

To his warm crucifix chest

Tall dark and handsome

Italian charmer smoking

Pall Mall Cigarettes.

Safe, safe in my daddy's

Love mended with Snoopy painted

In scarlet

Merthiolate, Bazooka

Bubble gum'n

Three Little Kitten songs

Made up in the car.

White lies, stolen pennies

Bloody knees and shattered

Hearts caught and kept

In leather and Old Spice hands

Faith in faithfulness

Changing cankered worst to golden best.

Geese Girls

A gaggle of girls

Turned into geese

Gossip and laugh

Behind stained glass

Changing each bright color

To gray as they pass.

The rainbow

Reflection upon the dead

Takes the shape of a slate

Birds as his soul

Joins theirs rising fast.

To skeleton and skin

Raging cancer said, "Pass."

Thin bones left hollow

Took flight. The olive mast

Caught air becoming

Sweet meadowlark song.

God's voice and avian

Sirens cry. "Welcome.

Farewell to sienna earth;

Ride our draft past the last

Ashy-ness of life

Into a royal prism vast

Full of jewelled windows that can't

Be overshadowed with black.

By Jo Lucero