swish, swish, knock swish, swish, knock a rhythm, a metronome once a week, usually Sunday
you felt very near to me today, also a Sunday,
me weeping while sweeping, or vice versa
my movement conjured you, conjured the once-me and the eternally you/ me, looking down from the landing// you, nearing the top of the 2-flat stairs in your white t-shirt looking up over your thick glasses at me, with your big eyes with your snaggle-toothed smirk, mustached/ broom in your beautiful hands / pure lank, elegance
had i snapped a photo of you on them stairs with that look/
a man who knew my father befriended me and caused me to question the nature of my reality, my history, its validity, my possibly-false memories — all, viewed through the lens of the person who had a vested interest in indoctrinating me who preferred my naïveté under the guise of protectivity
my last photo with my father, Christmas break, age 6, Waukegan, Illinois
parents can write stories on the folds of a child’s cerebrum, their pens go unchallenged until they’re challenged / their ink is like cord blood, except it can re/generate — or damage
but it only takes one person to crack their sky, then, we astronomers spend our lives asking these zealots the non-answerable “why?”
the man who bought my kindergarten clothes when i was four years old and paid my Lutheran school monthly tuition for eight years; the man who had the rusty 1972 VW Bug, gifted to me by my boyfriend for high school graduation restored over the summer before my freshman year of college; the man who adored both my son aka “monster” and “bam-bam”, and my first dog, Digby aka “hound”; the man who endured both the devastating loss of custody of and subsequent parental abduction of — and then, the tragic death of his only biological child, a son.
the man who never got the chance to properly retire and healthfully and happily collect his 30-year, hard-earned Teamster’s union pension — and just go fishing all day because he became acutely ill with undiagnosed kidney failure, and spent the last years of his life on thrice-weekly, hours-long dialysis treatment — and his last six months on Earth dying from a rare, aggressive and metastatic cancer.
may his spirit know peace eternally.
Willie Mack gingerly cradling his namesake Mack on the first full day of the baby’s life, and who we brought home on Father’s Day, 1994
“This used to be my playground.”
and, our proxy for church on spring, summer and fall sabbaths.
These were the halcyon days.
Load up the International Harvester TravelAll with wooden doors and quarter panels – it has two gas tanks, you know. Bought it used, but pristine on payments – from the showroom on Logan Boulevard and Elston Avenue with zero credit history and all the usury
Have mercy.
Follow me, and I will make you fishers of fish.
He will bait your hook on the bamboo pole he bought you. Later, you will insist on the “Pocket Fisherman” – as seen on TV.
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 