Poetry: A post you should probably just go ahead and skip....

So it's been awhile since I posted much of anything, it's been even longer since I put up any poetry.  Let me preface this by saying that I am not a poet.  I'm too lazy.  I like to explain things too much.  And I just don't have that certain je ne sais quoi, as the French and pretentious English speakers say, that makes a person a poet.  So what you get is somewhat crappy free verse with no sense of meter (and I'm not saying this out of false modesty, hoping someone will contradict me- "Oh, they're not so bad"- they are bad- as poetry at least). Nonetheless I do like to write it because it allows me a mode of expression that communicates more than simple description could.  The following poem, which I wrote almost exactly a year ago, is a case in point; I could say that I wrestle with God and that my thoughts are somehow tied up with everything I feel about my dad (a prospect which terrifies me about my own future kids- but that's probably a ways off... a long ways) or I could show it.  This poem is by no means an allegory, I really did used to wrestle with my dad when I was little (though we probably called it wrasslin') and I did like to climb up into his big leather recliner while he was gone- but that does not mean there isn't something more going on.  Poetry, or some other type of creative writing, allows the author to show this- it invites the reader to share in the story and see how these connections exist.  So, as I'm sure the suspense is killing you, here it is:

Father's Chair

I climb up, a child or old man, into Father's chair

It's soft- plush, full-grain leather- a contrast

to rough, scraggled hair, the birth or remnants of a beard

that scratched me as we wrestled,

Father is gone now, off to work perhaps,

or in simple absence for my benefit; the manliness

I feel approaching his chair, covertly or by institutionalized means

and sitting and smelling, familiar, masculine Father-smell;

remembering strong hands; gruff sports that drew me

close up; occasional victories, my own doing or not,

that made me like him.  And these

soft, still moments,

intimacy in absence

that perhaps no father and son can speak of,

eternal memory

that I am his, in my Father's chair.

                                 -10/12/08