“The Wounded Man,” oil on canvas, by Gustave Courbet, 1854.
—after Linda Pastan
1.
I never wrote just you, always you and Mother.
From camp, 1964, when one girl’s wails
started a cry-fest in our cabin. Please, please come get me,
my wide-ruled loose-leaf stained with a tear, on purpose.
From a Paris hostel, 1973. Wine is 1 franc (25 cents!)
After that, just phone calls to Mother,
quick visits home where you and I talked Perlman’s violin
or Al Kaline’s RBIs.
As Parkinson’s muted you,
why didn’t I try harder to wait for you to speak?
Impatience, yes, but also worry you’d labor
to repeat things four times. So I’d nod, not always understanding.
Did you try to tell me how hard it had become to brush your teeth?
Would you have told me more about the bus ride
from your village to Bitola for concerts?
2.
The roles of dad and provider matched you when we were kids:
A rope from your bumper pulling the sled,
our squeals sliding along icy streets,
or you coming home, your restaurant clinging to you,
a mix of cumin and paprika, your hands of bills and coins.
But, later, your retreat to the recliner and TV made it hard
for me to forgive your giving up, giving in.
Would I have done any better had disease vibrated my body
the way woodpeckers used to drill our antenna?
My hands becoming nervous leaves on the sugar maples?
I’m sorry. It’s like you half died before you died,
and it took admitting my own dents and stains before
I could accept your first death.
3.
Don’t all daughters hope to be good daughters?
Despite my backing away, you knew my love, didn’t you?
Like you knew how to read War and Peace in two languages.
Mother always said you taught us how to love.
My smile is hers, but your watermark more than claims me.
4.
It’s spring—wasps build their adobes in my eaves again,
and if we all still lived on Packard Avenue, I’d avoid the woodpile,
their sinister flight, spiked legs trailing.
I see you and my brother burning leaves in the yard
after a day of family raking, jumping in the piles.
5.
You’d be 109 now: Do these 23 years feel like 23
or 5 or nothing? It doesn’t seem to matter,
even in my timed world where snow and roses take turns.
I miss you.
The father—who’d been gymnast in the Old Country—
twirling himself over the monkey bars.
The father summing up my prom date but saying nothing.
The gentle father who left a body of blessings behind,
who gave my lips a peck every time I flew away.
6.
I’m writing because I’m to be remarried.
He wants to know you. You’d speak Russian together.
You would’ve seen La Traviata with us last night.
You’d see how kind he is to me.
And even though I’m 66,
I want it to be you walking me down the aisle.
Karen Paul Holmes won the 2023 Lascaux Poetry Prize and received a Special Mention in The 2024 Pushcart Prize Anthology. Her books are: No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin, 2018) and Untying the Knot (Aldrich, 2014). Poetry credits include The Writer’s Almanac, The Slowdown, Verse Daily, Diode, Glass, and Plume. She teaches creative writing at venues and conferences here and there.
