| John Sokol |
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| Love Is a Mule "Time and the weather wear away The houses that our fathers built." -Donald Justice "Who doesn't need an evil parent To explain why the world doesn't love us" -J. D. McClatchy So you hated your father for every time he smacked You on the head, And for all the times he kicked you across a room: Back in the fifties, When he rarely spared his belt, his foot, or his fist, And when you were certain You were getting your ass kicked better than Jimmy Bates and Joey Garcia. You never understood why he persisted, since your Wrongs, and his rights, Were always the same. When you turned sixteen, He stopped, for no apparent reason. You were almost a man, and you figured: maybe he Thought he'd done what he could. When you were in your thirties, you wrote your father A letter, thanking him, For teaching you the meaning of hard work, and the Importance of manners; For holding you to "the straight-and-narrow"and Keeping you out of jail. You told him you felt free of all the hatred you had Toward him when you were Too full of anger to forgive the means he used To his ends. "You could have done Better, but, all and all, you did OK," you wrote. His letter of response Arrived a month later. "I'm sorry for the ways, but Not for the whys. You'll have to Forgive me, is all. Love is a mule. Sometimes It kicks, and sometimes, You have to kick it." You laughed at his asinine Aphorism, even though you'd seen, And written, many worse. And for six months You considered his terse, "Come see me!" closure. So one day you drove to Florida and left behind all the baggage That once sent you packing and out of his reach For years. As you approached His house, you swallowed the sock in your throat, And resigned yourself To accepting the past as rites of passage. And during that visit, The two of you were Mr. Reason and Mr. Rhyme, Making up for lost time As you placed your sorry bets on a horse that was out To pasture. The following summer: You went snorkeling together, in the Sea of Cortez. The year after that, it was fly-fishing For trout, on the Black River. And for years, whenever You could get out of Ohio, Or Pennsylvania, or New York, you flew to Florida, To see "the old man." Sometimes, he came to see you. But never -- in all Those years of reconciliation -- Had you stopped thinking your father wouldn't, Or couldn't, kick your ass, again. You knew, as the years went by, this was only in your Head; maybe a knee-jerk reaction; Or the reason you only smiled, at recurring visions, Of an eighty-year-old man, slamming His fifty-year-old son against a wall. Still, you felt: It wasn't a matter of "if," But only of matter of "when." And sure enough -- as we Might have expected -- you tell us, now: The day he died, he kicked your ass, again. |
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