Poems about My Father on Father's Day

A young couple live in Florida during the Great Depression when jobs are scarce and a young man must do what he has to do to keep his family housed and fed. 

The Ice House Job

After working 9 hours in the hot Florida sun,

he came home to eat a meal with her and his kids.

She told him how she wished he could stay with her

and rest, let her rub his back. I get scared here without you.

But he said he had to pay the rent, put food on the table.

As the kids were tucked into bed, he climbed

into his old truck, headed to work.

It should have been a relief after the sun burned

his skin to dark brown leather, but he wore his ragged

jacket and a cap with flaps over his ears

as if he had walked into dead of winter in Wisconsin.

Alone in the quiet he wondered how long could he go on

working two jobs, getting little sleep.

His back, tired from plowing mules all day,

his hands cold and chapped, he chopped

the fifty pound blocks. With both hands he clamped

the tongs that griped the slippery squares, swung his shoulders

tossing his burden up on the platform, over and over

until the clock said midnight, quitting time.

He climbed into bed too tired to bathe.

Her hand reached through the night,

touched his face. He slept but she lay awake

thinking of going home to Georgia, seeing her folks,

hearing him laugh again, and tell his stories to the kids.

After forty years of farming, a man can't just sit down and quit. He rises early every day and works a large plot of ground that feeds his children and grandchildren all summer, if only they would come and harvest his crop.

     

Daddy with his granddaughter, Carrie, on his birthday. Note the baseball player and the baseball on the cake. He loved baseball and was a very good player when he was a young man.

 Gardener

Once he cultivated vast acres of cotton,

peanuts, harvested bounteous crops 

Grey haired, now he sits in his frayed lawn chair,

sweat staining his chambray shirt, pock-marked

with burn holes from his Pall Malls.

His stooped frame rests from a morning

spent spraying tomatoes, trying to murder

small bugs who battle him for his harvest.

His eyes survey a pristine garden.

Tall corn and green beans climb twine

strung on poles in rows equally distanced.

Piles of summer squash strewn on clean straw

hide under leaves large as sun hats.

He caresses the cropped ears of his canine friend.

The cigarette ash grows long. He hardly notices

the shortened smoke, the fire against his callouses.

            ---Glenda Council Beall