Most of my faithful disciples know that I am not a typical red-blooded American male. I don't go deer hunting or fly fishing. Couldn't change the oil in my car even if a gun was aimed at my head by a January 6th insurrectionist. The only reason I even watched a minute of the Super Bowl this year was to see Kendrick Lamar. I detest country music, and my definition of a relaxing day is a good book of poems and a glass of wine.
So, when I found out my second child was going to be a boy, I panicked. I'd had eight years of fathering a girl. I knew all about braiding hair and ballet lessons and piano lessons. My parenting skills were limited to a specific gender.
Sharon Olds' son goes to war . . .
Armor
by: Sharon Olds
Just about at the triple-barreled pistol
I can't go on. I sink down
as if shot, beside the ball of its butt
larded with mother-of-pearl. My son
leaves me on the bench, and goes on. Hand on
hips, he gazes at a suit of armor,
blue eyes running over with silver,
looking for a slit. He shakes his head,
hair greenish as the gold velvet
cod-skirt hanging before him in volutes
at a metal groin. Next, I see him
facing a case of shields, fingering
the sweater over his heart, and then
for a long time I don't see him, as a mother will
lose her son in war. I sit
and think about men. Finally the boy
comes back, sated, so fattened with gore
his eyelids bulge. We exit under the
huge tumescent jousting irons,
their pennants a faded rose, like the mist
before his eyes. He slips his hand
lightly in mine, and says Not one of those
suits is really safe. But when we
get to the wide museum steps
railed with gold like the descent from heaven,
he can't resist,
and before my eyes, down the stairs,
over and over, clutching his delicate
unprotected chest, my son
dies, and dies.
I can absolutely identify with Olds in this poem. A museum full of weapons and suits of armor would fascinate me for a short while. Then I'd be looking for the nearest exit. I didn't play with toy guns as a kid. War was not something glorious in my mind. It terrified me. Still does. I was a Star Wars kid--lasers, aliens, and princesses with cinnamon-buns for hair.
But I think I've done an alright job with my son. He hasn't been exposed to the kinds of things most young males in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are. I've walked through woods with him, but the only thing we've shot are pictures of deer and interesting trees. I've never tinkered on car engines with him, but I have shown him how the engine of a poem works (image and metaphor and meter and line).
Yet, my son is a pretty cool sixteen-year-old. He's sensitive and loving. Doesn't judge anyone by gender or skin color or sexual orientation or religion. He's getting mostly A's in school and has never once asked me to thread a worm on a hook or play football. We don't even own a football. My son does boy things. Plays basketball with his friends. Surfs porn on his phone. Gets his heart broken by crushes.
In short, I haven't fucked him up too much. That's a win. I bet there's not too many fathers who can say that their sixteen-year-old sons say "I love you" at the end of every one of their conversations. My son does that with me. And my response is always the same: "I love you, too."
Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about another father thing he doesn't do--baseball. It's based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
On this date in 1999, baseball legend Joe DiMaggio died at the age of eighty-four. Think about that iconic line and question: Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? from the Simon & Garfunkel song "Mrs. Robinson," and write a poem that addresses it. Does Joe DiMaggio meet up with Marilyn Monroe in heaven? Does his spirit remain alive in the threads of his New York Yankees uniform? Let the poem explore a specific memory you have with baseball, and let Joltin' Joe wander into it. If you're not familiar with Joe DiMaggio, do a little research and see if you can find an unusual fact about him to include in your poem.
Where Have You Gone?
by: Martin Achatz
Some say your life passes
before your eyes when you
die, like a Macey's Thanksgiving
parade. Maybe he saw himself
as a balloon the size of the Empire
State Building, a baseball bat
as long as an aircraft carrier
in his hands. Perhaps a float
rolled by, on it the Rockettes
with cups of coffee balanced
on their heads kicked from
Central Park West to Herald Square.
Five hundred bagpipers in kilts
played "Take Me out to the Ball Game"
as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
sang along. Simon & Garfunkel
reunited in his honor, crooning
about Mrs. Robinson while above
Yankee Stadium fireworks flowered
for 56 minutes straight. At the end,
not Santa Claus in a sleigh. No.
It was her, all her, always, as rose
petals blizzarded from the heavens,
she in her strapless pink gown, long
white gloves, riding in a convertible,
her platinum hair blinding in November
sunlight, waving, lip syncing "I Wanna
Be Loved By You" to him, only him,
always, as he wound up and swung
for the fences one last time.
