When my father swam, he was a bull butting the waters, or an old-fashioned washing machine churning harder and harder. With all that effort, you would have thought he'd beat the high-rollers. When my father ate, he was an octopus, thick tendrils writhing, or a steam shovel chewing a hill, grunting and chomping. Not for him the gas pump's dire warning: Avoid Overtopping. When my father prayed, he prayed up a storm, a hurricane, a tornado, or he was that gunslinger sent down the streets of Laredo. Whatever my father did, he did it like a deathblow. When my father left, it wasn't the happily ever after of the Brothers Grimm. He dropped from the earth like a canyon drops from its rim. and not one metaphor I mixed was big enough, not nearly, to salvage him. by Dick Allen Dick Allen's new book Present Vanishing is available from Sarabande books along with two previous volumes of verse. |