He used flat slabs of river stone
to make a path around the beautiful, sprawling oak,
smack in the center of the yard—
but never finished it, the path. I talk about it, I’ve written
about it, I don’t know why. I don’t know why
he didn’t complete it nor why
I keep wanting to say
something about it, which I can’t. It's not like he said
much of anything about anything. How many mute fathers
of his generation in
are there, for fucking out loud?
He wouldn't talk to me about his job—head guy in data processing
at the big county courthouse, just off the highway by the beach,
that statue of Father Sera
standing stiffly in the flowers on the lawn and staring out
to sea—back when computers
were the size of fathers and fathers brought home punch cards
with secrete codes of ones and zeros or ones and twos
for their kids to mark with crayon.
He wouldn't talk to me about his work
even after I'd come of age, even after I'd been away from home
long enough to go back home, summoned by my mom
to come help out when he was dying, and say goodbye, and simply be around
for her. He wouldn't talk about the war.
Barely mentioned his dream of flying.
Said nothing about the pictures he drew
as a young man and why he gave that up;
nothing about his miserable stepfather
and rather odd mother— her apparently hysterical
religious inclinations nor how she handled the death
of his father, lost in some awful, industrial accident
on the farm in Oklahoma—(what I know, I know only through others);
nothing about his work for the aerospace industry
out in the deserts of New Mexico, the very same places where the bomb
was first developed and tested; nothing about California,
the early days of the southland
when even L.A., even Glendale and Pasadena
were apparently beautiful;
nothing about meeting my mom, nothing regarding his hopes
for his children, or his work, or his marriage, or his life—
The older I get, really, the less he actually said.
Every year it's less and less.
By the time I die, hell,
he will have never said a word.