Dad's World

Letters in a certain order.

He was forty-five when I showed up, His breaths pre-dating the great depression. He was a marked man, my Dad. Marked by an indomitable good nature And by a vertical scar On the left side of his forehead. As a toddler, he had reached To the top of the hand-crank clothes washer To pull himself up. Instead, he pulled the washer down. And as he buckled beneath it, The cast iron gearing Split his head open like a soft melon. To stop the bleeding They packed the wound in sugar – One of those emergency home remedies That kept people alive back then. It seems to have worked. He was a hands-on guy, my Dad, Ever since he was a little boy – Hauling water for the steam threshers As neighborhood crews groomed summer fields. There was always a gear slipped A pin sheared, or a belt broke. And little-Clarence was there, Looking over the shoulder Of the mechanic who fixed it. Got his tinkering mojo way back then. During his young adult years, When nobody had any money, He didn’t have any either. So he all got along all right – Learning to do When you couldn’t make do. After working his way through high school And working his way through college And a brief interlude in uniform He wound up being a teacher. He loved pulling knowledge From the reticent minds of students And sharing that bounty with the entire class. Dad’s World Mark Pearce (c) 2007

Author's Note

This is something that you may not have read before.

Reviews

[Emily B]

I haven't read this before. I would remember the gentle rememberings of these lines. I think he would smile at the portrait you paint here.