Augur of Clay

by Brent House

& when I say goodbye to my father   he says

I can’t even lift myself on the tractor   I’m ready.

What more? I ask.

For this boy who worked his mother’s farm under the hand

of a stepfather   who carried a sack to melon fields

filled rind against rind   the only son of a man who died

(How can a son question his mother?) carried his load.

Far apart from those rows

Stars glint through rafters & such   & acres

a father gathers for a dollar.   this thing

they’re not making any more

until a son taxed by his inheritance   breaks & rises

as plains from a gulf.

That’s not my father   nor his father.

I am not the son.

My father: a man without land   rather deeds.

His wingtips worn into the fields   as a gentleman.

The two pair of Florsheim’s in my closet haven’t worn

the letters from their soles.

I had one pair of shoes for my senior year   he says.

I don’t see them in the photo   but I believe his story.

On a hill—miles from the spring—a cousin’s new well & power. Still

our blood gathers at the old places   behind a crescent moon & sits

as the hollow of earth accepts.

When I ask my father to write the story of his life   he writes:

I went into CCC camp in July just before was 20 yrs of age, stayed in 3 ½ yrs, worked in the forestry service part as a clerk. When I first went in was stioned east of Saucier, near success ms. worked there in forestry service experiment station, never did understand the work, just did what i was told to do. then we moved east of brooklyn, ms. that is where I served the rest of my 3 ½ years. while i was there bought a 1938 ford two door with a radio for the sum of 813 dollars. after that never did have a shortage of girlfriends. my wishes now is i wished had invested money in land.

O father

I wonder   if your father   walked the streets for years

after your birth   stayed   nearhand

to a woman who weighed lives as flour on a standard scale.

I wonder how might   before the sawing   the cutting  

& the sapping    we have told a pine to open

& deliver us from the bed of deep horizons.

I’ve seldom seen the stones of my ancestors

still our blood gathers at the old places   & I listen   as voices spring from roots of Hickory    as foxfires

spring light   to attract a limb or defer a hunger  

bright enough to read    though still cold to touch

exhalant bodies & onionskin truth:

1. We can’t take our soils to heaven.

2. A father knows his firstborn child.

3. The lastborn child knows heaven.

My father & I   one as arrhythmias of birdsongs

as the harmony of a hit single   without copyright

or consummate proof of ownership

recorded   again & again

he sang:

I was dancing with my darling to the Tennessee Waltz

When an old friend I happened to see.

His mourning:   for pasture acres & ochre pleasures  

an unheralded daughter

bound on a cushion   deep & beautifully tailored

& taken in a shallow trough of sedimentary desire

so I have planted seeds in black humus   in the flesh between.

My rawboned father danced with his love   & for years knew

not a bit of her child

born &  later   in images kept in a shoebox   I stand between both

as redemption of past sin

my arms around each shoulder & my hands over blades

sharp enough to draw blood

 & long with eluviations.