A Circus Elegy for Dad, June 25th, 2001

I

The simplest way to start is to say
We stood together without you.

The salt and pepper crowd filed in, 
    More than I ever knew you knew,
        In charcoal suits you fought so hard not to wear
            And the chaplain with all his pins and medals
Intoned an urgent prayer for the retired sergeant.

The base chapel smelt of microwave popcorn
    As you sat, ash in an urn,
        Salute half masked by the flag.
            There are certain aspects of tents
That provide a singular backdrop to my life – 

Their blank canvases, telescoping poles, their portability,
    Transported from town to town with no foundation,
        Never a firm fixture, the loose faucet handles
            Spill out way too literally, spell out
A place I’ve never heard of but would soon call home.

Under $30K, the fixed wage you earned until I was thirteen,
    Your soldier’s salary poured salt in wounds of service –
        Indentured by fractured dentures, 
            Teeth pinched out by a 2-ton icy windshield
In that German o-dark-thirty  when you were just thirty.

Mom stood years on the highwire balancing finances,
    Feeding a family of five without driving
        When you’d spend months TDY,
            Our clothes on layaway until the next school year
And mom’s part-time teacher’s pay blew chalk in my face,

Like those other kids, the many black eyes.
All those young minds, not one left to waste.
 
II

I read aloud from his personal copy of “The Road Less Traveled,” 
    His favorite poem, the one from the collection 
        That mom’s mother inscribed “Happy reading, 
            Xmas ’74,” two days after my birth, 
The year they hitchhiked down parenthood together,

She, teaching English to Tehran’s alleycats,
    He, stationed to maintain foreign relations
        Passing coded notes as an embassy liaison,
            Floating into Soviet water with Iranians
Behind enemy lines in fishing rafts on the Caspian.

Waking in cold sweats unable to share his secret fears,
Turned into beers in the officer’s club afterhours.

Every word reverberated against the chapel granite,
    Each rounded vowel altered the chambers,
        The plain and simple message of a pastoral walk,
            My understated, monotonous prosody 
Spoke of suffering and loss between the lines.

My father’s cold war friends and heroes
    Lied low in the last few rows
        As if exile were second nature,
            As if keeping distance from a caged lion,
Heads bowed, bronze as a statue, a monument.

A layer of Frost coated stone faces
    As squeaking pews slipped into silence.
        They silenced their breathing with memory 
            with each tentative, vocal step through the passage. 
As the final line was uttered with a stutter,

I sat back down between my wife and mother,
And that has made all the difference.
 
III

We return to the scene of the mourning,
    Every thought itched with stubble on my face from staying up late,
        packing our place to move halfway across the country.
            I had followed in the beard of your name for 26 years,
But this week mom lost both her Stephens.

I held my wife’s hand like a breath, 
    Circumnavigated emotions with the rings we’d exchanged
        Two days before; noticed mom still wore hers, 
            The smoke rings had signalled carcinoma,
Some form of semaphore over the tumor,

Folded in among the radio and microwaves,
    You lied in silence sipping shaved ice, beard ever silver,
        Until the night we walked you to the back door
            To get one last look at the home you’d hoped to retire to.
You caught the lightning in your clenched fist.

We were lined up like a firing squad,
    The rifles in cages on the patches of your folded uniform,
        As your friends shared our grief, shaking hands
            like clowns who can’t look at themselves in a mirror.
If I had succumbed to tears, this would be a pure memory.

For this I offer an apology – 
The chaplain forgot to read the eulogy.