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| Don Decker |
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Family
Trilogy One
"Dear
Don,"
she wrote
to me,
her
youngest son,
a far,
cold North away.
Delicately
penciled prose
on blue
lined paper said,
"I might
as well just tell you..."
Nothing
more.
The
confused confession made her
condition
coldly clear.
A cloud
had darkened all her realm
like
nightfall on a slope
of freshly
fallen snow,
and
lingered there until her sentence was complete.
Family
Trilogy. Two
Dear
Brother:
You came
late to the house,
once
yours.
Angry
ex-marine,
fireman
with
spit
shined shoes and buckle dutifully
centered
above the zipper.
"About
dad's car," you slurred
to Mom,
recent widow, whose words
said
nothing back.
I came
downstairs,
freckled
and frail in ill fitted briefs,
my head
and heart entangled
In my
only, lonely battle
against
your will.
You were
older, always stronger, meaner.
"Look at
him,"
was all
you said,
about, not
to, me.
Then you
left.
All my
days I was your little kin,
no
brother.
I could no
longer hide from scorn or hurt
nor long
held fears or years spent fighting with myself.
So I left
too that night.
You.
Family
Trilogy. Three
Dear Dad:
I was
seventeen in '60.
You were
sixty.
I rowed.
You fished
from the stern.
My dog
swam out to us mid lake.
Though you
forbade it,
I pulled
him in by the collar.
I chose
him over you.
I had to.
You told
me to throw the anchor.
Untied,
it sank in
green water with a sip and bubble,
to its
final resting place.
I remember
the rented
anchor meant more to you than my regret.
I worked
the line,
gas tank
after tank.
Standing
under moving cars in a concrete pit.
Four
hundred
fifty
seven
per
day.
On day one
the
foreman showed a big red button to stop the line.
"Never,"
he said, "stop the line."
There you
watched me in your blue guard suit:
satin
stripes and slick black shoes, busman's cap and badge,
talking to
others about me.
Now I am
older than you were when you died,
And have
learned to love you more.
I wish I
could have stopped the line,
or
anchored us just long enough
for you to
pull me in.
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