I think I take after my mother more than my father.
My father was a flint of a man, hard and volatile at times. I know he loved me, but his way of expressing that love was working his ass off to support his family. He generally didn't indulge in physical demonstrations of affection. No kisses or hugs, at least not with his sons.
My mother was a thinker, examining situations from all angles. She read a lot. Laughed a lot. Loved her kids a lot. Mom was the one who convinced me to study computer science when I started college, so I had something to fall back on if this writing/poetry thing didn't work out. I hardly ever saw her lose her temper, but, when she did, it was terrifying to behold--silent and furious.
Sharon Olds recognizes her father in herself . . .
Poem to My Husband
from My Father's Daughter
by: Sharon Olds
I have always admired your courage. As I see you
embracing me, in the mirror, I see I am
my father as a woman, I see you bravely
embrace him in me, putting your life in his
hands as mine. You know who I am--you can
see his hair springing from my head like
oil from the ground, you can see his eyes,
reddish as liquor left in a shot-glass and
dried dark, looking out of my face,
and his firm sucking lips, and the breasts
rising frail as blisters from his chest,
tipped with apple-pink. You are fearless, you
enter him as a woman, my sex like a
wound in his body, you flood your seed in his
life as me, you entrust your children to that
man as a mother, his hands as my hands
cupped around their tiny heads. I have never
known a man with your courage, coming
naked into the cage with the lion, I
lay my enormous paws on your scalp I
take my great tongue and begin to
run the rasp delicately
along your skin, humming: as you enter
ecstasy, the hairs lifting
all over your body, I have never seen a
happier man.
Olds can see much of her father in the mirror of her husband's eyes. Even though her relationship with her father wasn't functional in any way, she is still his daughter and carries his physicality in her body. She can't escape him.
When I look in the mirror, I see my mother's face--her cheeks and chin cleft and smile. I'm pretty mild-mannered, like her, and think deeply about things before making decisions, also like her. She read all the time, with a penchant for mysteries and romances, and she could talk to anyone with ease.
While I'm not a big fan of cozy mysteries or love stories, I did inherit my love of words from her. She read everything I wrote and came to every reading I gave until she physically couldn't. She was my biggest fan.
Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight that his mother would have loved, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Spend time doing a little research today. Possible subjects: Egyptian pharaohs, astronomy, reptiles, geologic features of South America. Incorporate lesser-known facts about your chosen subject into your poem. If you are nowhere near a library and don't have Internet, write a poem on a subject you know little of nothing about, making up facts as you please.
Darwinopterus modularis
by: Martin Achatz
A crow the size of a gargoyle
perches above my office window,
a scrap of midnight at noon.
I watch as it watches the street
below, its onyx eyes hungry
for something smaller, weaker,
the way pterosaurs skimmed
seas for beds of plankton, flash
of silver fish in the briny foam,
a ruling reptile, all membrane,
keratinous fibers, claws like
thunderbolts. I wonder if the crow
feels its royal blood, how
the kings and queens in its
line gazed on high from sclerotic
rings at the cretaceous kingdoms,
leafed and scaled and furred.
Did they know (does the crow?)
we would spend eons trying
to become angels and gods
like them? When I step outside,
will I be blessed with feather,
beak, tail, evolve into Gabriel,
six-winged seraph, chimera?
Will I soar into the heavens
to find the face of God, claw
at his vitreous humor until
it rains down, flooding the world
again for 40 days and 40 nights?
The crow opens its mouth, makes
a sound like the Second Coming.
❤️JT
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