I’ve spent these last 40 days gathering what I have of my father. What did my dad give me?

Genetically I have the unmistakable profile. I also have a memory of moments that are just perfect.

My dad flew model planes. Not the kind that are gasoline powered and remote controlled. The kind you assembled from plans, piecing together frames and trusses from wood . Over the frame you stretch Japanese paper or some film so thin, air will tear it if you walk too fast. Then you carve and shave out the curves of a propeller, and hook it onto the frame with a rubber motor.

It’s a very involved process where you have to figure out how the power of the motor, the lightness of the frame, and the length and shape of the wing work together to determine how long and how high the plane will fly.

I remember Saturday night in his workshop – doing my own thing in the corner as my dad tweaked some plane that he would try out the following day. Next morning, my dad would ask: “Do you want to fly today?” Flying meant, plane held lightly in hand we would walk to the middle of a large field, count up the winds of the motor, set the propeller, aim the nose up into the air, release, and off the plane would spiral and climb into the sky.

Inside this memory I am paused, shoes damp from dew, morning air cool on my skin, standing loosely, my head bent toward the sky. The light, open, blue sky and there is the graceful floaty climbing of the plane. It’s flying! A perfect moment.

Stepping back from the memory today, I realize something. That thing flying up there was wood and paper and a rubber band. Fantastic! As themselves I wouldn’t recognize them as flying things. But given some thought and patience and crafting, there they go. Do you want to fly today? Why not?

That’s what my dad gave me. An inquiring why not? Why not anything at all, given some thought and patience and crafting. Imagine the fantastic and craft its realization. My dad gave me the realizable fantastic, and the light, open, blue sky.

i am the beggar of this horizon
i have no wherewithal

except as it please you
only those things
small enough to be missed
in the transactions of a day

held in a pinch and dropped
in the quick passing
not even much
not even stay

let fall a smile
brush my hand with your hand
accidentally
meet my eye

in passing

the bread last saturday was preceded. it was reputed the week before, and again the day before, and even earlier that day. saturday, bread would be made.

it was preceded by a foldable blue cart with a bread machine, in case. a diminutive scale of the ounces and thirds or sevenths in a satchel, and the white book of bread wisdom ruffled with yellow post-its denoting the road followed.

and, flour, and yeast, and sugar, and oil, and salt, and fresh herbs. and little bowls with larger ones, and measured spoons, and a long black granite table.

and a reading from the book, procedurally just so: two, one, one half, one third, one spoon, one hand. wet - water warm not hot - and then dry, and then together. and knead.

and the faith, it will rise. set aside in a quiet corner, if kept away from the draft. to twice its size in an hour whose every minute was remarked. and conscientiously occupied with talk and making chicken soup and side glances.

and lo, and yes, the larger dough - kneaded and patted into the pan. brushed with oil and salted. herbed and spiced to taste. popped in the oven, became bread. and was eaten.

i am not allowed to absent my mind
from these certain things
that to everything there is a season
and time for every purpose under the sun

each of those verses resonant in turn
unmoved
i am the vessel into which each of these drops
marking what
the collection of things that come to pass
in enough time

perhaps i shall accrue the equanimity
in enough time

but for now each of these minutes
fill with your ebbing
i cannot scale them to impassive eons

i must ask you then to be on purpose

these days i am full of prayer and haunting. i am a sitter in an evening full of shadows deep and quickened by candle light. how it is that the circle is drawn with the dancing edge of flickering and they are lively at bay as whispers. approaching receding. these days i am full of prayer and haunting.

the way that
figments are snide in their obtuse predation
this only light enough to make shadows disappears me in melting segments
in light in dark in light in dark
with its sputtering dance

nothing is full, only foreboding

my mother told me i'm on my third life

i guess that there was that, what nowadays passes for the usual process. the rush to the hospital, the various attentions, the happy discharge. the loving ones who wait outside to see you and exclaim how wonderful you are alive.

for my third life i was born on the 7th of july. my mom wasn't there, i met her later. but there was the same wonder - about what life must have in store for this person. and i was born with four other people:

my cousin who will teach english,
my cousin who will be a doctor,
my cousin who will maybe make things that fly,
my uncle who will build beautiful houses with a lot of light.

this time around in a kind of full circle i was born in the town of my shadow forbears. the ones you never met but insist themselves in some imprint, maybe in the downturn of your eyes or the set of your shoulders - the ones you kin by recognition because you watch for reflections. i was born in an accident similar to how my grandfather died. which is what set this thread adrift. which drift i wanted to catch in returning to his hometown, to walk his streets, to see his sights, to feel his people.

i like to think he was there for this birth, easing our way, the five of us. softening the upending splintering of the car as it rolled after being hit. easing us from the wreck. i believe he was there in the watchful eyes of my uncle who averted the worst from happening, in my cousin's presence of mind, in the love and concern of my cousins. his people, my people.

there is this thread, (how similarly we are enamored of the moon, magicked by the ambling coded morse of fireflies), that i found, that will weave into the warp and weft of this life.

five of us after dinner

you said it would be a beautiful night to go blueberry picking and see fireflies. i'd never even thought to put the three together, night, and berry picking, and fireflies. yes, why not. and out the front door, the short way to the car was the remarkable moon. a full moon. you said it would be a lovely night for stars.

five of us after dinner, that inertia of dododosomething that is made for the nightswish of a car. who'd think to tour a city in the dark? but the moon is full and there is a tower overlooking the city on the hill where the poets sat. of course through a forested road up a hill. climb that black scaffolding of steps and gaze through the arched windows at the resting of each flight. finally the sky, the deep sky of a city in a bowl of mountains. in the dark you said, what was fantastic is during the fall, the foliage. pinched your thumb and forefinger into an inch of circle saying i could never count the number of colors i could see through this in the fall.

and a ghost story of a railway accident under the bridge near the children crossing sign. all those children who died in the crash are trying to push your car to safety from the tracks. if you put your gears to neutral you'll feel them pushing you away. true enough, the car rolled uphill.

at the community college there was a sign that read labyrinth. you'd been looking for it four years and almost believed the sign was a practical joke. well we found it at last after wandering to the edge of the field, skirting the perimeter and looking for likely gaps in the trees. it was etched in the grass unobtrusive and resplendent.

after that we walked to the pond where the frogs were playing the monday night symphony glorious and noisy. and the ducks were swimming. five of us after dinner.

dear lord
please bless the strong

keep them slightly askew and unpredictable
make them irrational and unaccepting
hold them to excellence

make them beloved
of those with laughing hearts

walk with them
talk with them
never leave them

keep them strong

amen.