Large Man in a Magazine Photo
Poem by Donna O’Connell
I’m drawn to you in black and white.
The way you don’t lean, your cane a companion.
Your thick camel hair coat wraps
around your girth. Your lips a tight
line certain of the right way to go.
Unlike you, father was an ordinary
man and thin as a maple sapling.
If he met you he would call you“sir”,
speak up only if invited.
Gray hair careless on his forehead.
He wore a jacket until a zipper broke
or loose buffalo nickels
escaped through his pockets.
When I’d ask about his day
at the Raytheon factory
he’d be silent and ruffle my hair.
At mother’s bidding he scrubbed
the rings around the bathtub on his knees.
If her voice leapt an octave
he was the one who said “I’m sorry”.
If I were your child I could have gazed
up at you rather than see my father gaze down.
I could bend my neck way back to view
paintings of rams with curling horns
on the domed ceiling of your offices.
Did you have children? My father ferried us
on his back throughout the house
when we played “whoa and giddy-up”.
He regaled us at bedtime,
tales about childhood told with a hint of lilt,
with wide-mouthed grins and dimples.
On his last bed young grandkids
climbed the thin trunk of his body.
Their murmurings like quiet bells.
