Poetry / Our Dead Fathers
Fingers trace letters and dates,
big as thumbnails and carp scales,
curved like fins and innards.
Brown rivers flow north
and crows darker than shadows
roost in gray muscled oaks
above a finger length of snow
covering grass wounds healing.
Be quiet fathers.
Sons’ foreheads press letters
and dates, deep as worms
and sown seeds,
rows like victory gardens.
Starlings and cornstalks,
full of fear chase of dead grackles’
chicks and cracked eggs along
smocked soil and sky
above a finger length of snow
covering grass wounds healing.
Quiet now fathers.
Big and beautiful willows
loop knots of cord.
White sheets and mothers swell
in the April spring air
their pink lips tremble under
crisp leaves above a finger length
of snow covering grass wounds healing.
There is calm now. Calm down fathers.
We live with your last can of shaving cream,
bottle of after-shave, tee-shirt down to our knees,
stolen coins from work pants, hate
when you slept in the afternoon.
Our words flee early spring rains
on red granite engraved,
polished high. “Rest fathers rest.
Know we kneel on grass wounds
healing and whisper your names softly in death."
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Your poem has a fantastic ending, but it begins too ambiguously. Perhaps think fo starting your poem with the same way it ends (addressing the “fathers”). Also, it seems to drag in the middle. I feel this is due to the massive lump of words you have. Think about perhaps breaking it up a bit into smaller bits.
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