Posted tagged ‘Prose poem about father’

Two Step (Completely Revised, Renewed, Sorry)

June 20, 2012
Revised Two Step

For those interested in a writer’s process:  writers (at least writers like me) sometimes overwork things and completely mess them up – especially at 2 in the morning.    So below is a poem previously posted in a much different version.  I’ve gone back to something more like the original; it’s a Father’s Day poem which is probably why it was difficult. 

Two Step

You could never really manage more than a two-step and even that stumbled to its own chuckled beat, your movements accented with a panache of abashment.

And I would watch from the sidelines, sometimes with my own more snarky embarrassment, being young and indentured to the Gods of Cool.

But the truth is I didn’t snipe much, knowing even as a teen that I could never embody such goodness, my edges just too sharp, like my mother’s nose, my own elbows.

The only time I even came close was later, when you could no longer walk, barely stand, and I brought you those old songs (Glenn Miller, your remembered sound of hope in hard times, having made it across the Channel ’44), and your feet, though unable to truly press the floor, would shuffle in that same old just-off beat, arms lifted.

And whether or not heaven is an actual place–I hate to say that I have my doubts== at least I’m not sure about one with dance floors–I feel your pulse in my head today, Father’s Day, the air around me as tuneful as those hollowed instruments = and am mindful of the resurrection of love, that incredible two step of gift and receipt only in your case it was giving mainly –that’s what you did, and perhaps why your movements always seemed a bit unbalanced, dancing.

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(I am reposting this for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night and  Tess Kincaid’s MagPie Tales.  The picture is Tess’s prompt by M.C. Escher.  I am also linking to Emily Wierenga’s Imperfect Prose .)

Two Step (Go to Next Revised Post)

June 20, 2012