Poem a Day: 7

7.

Gods of Childhood

Grandma Tutu loved to travel. She took her camera

     around the world, exploring Antarctica, Easter Island,

the African savannah, sitting in Afghan tents, eating

     with her fingers in China, walking across the hills of Ireland

with a gnarly stick, smiling into Columbian winds as they

     filled her up with their caffeine.  At 85, she still

volunteered at a local hospital, cleaning bedpans, bringing

     daffodils to lonely rooms, sitting with patients her own age

or younger, passing the grounded hours.  I hear her

     laugh, I see her shining eyes under their mop of

gray hair, I smell her comfortable odors: sand and

     salt, a clean embrace like the San Diego sun

on our shoulders. We flocked to her from the South

     and the East, bringing our hidden skins and our

tired souls, offering ourselves to her for healing.

     When we visited, she brought out her famous pumpkin

bread, frozen just for such an occasion, her trademark

     spaghetti sauce.  She told stories about her trips, dressing

in costume after costume, putting on countries we’d

     never visit, flashing slides in the twilit patio while lightning

bugs crashed against the screens. I loved her simply,

     as a child, with wonder and awe: my father’s mother.  She was

magical--light and air and happiness. I thought

     she would never die.

In the dark, her eyes flashed behind their glasses, pure

     starlight, making her a goddess.  Grandpa Mac,

sitting on the couch in another room, yelled at the TV, threw

     his cracked hands in agitated arcs, cursed

the politicians and the bums.  His mind wandered into

     dark countries, seeking justice for the past, but his body

stayed put.  He sucked gin into himself, bloating with

     drunken memories, weighed down by hurts.

If Grandma was a goddess, then Grandpa was a god, an old-style

     patriarch, hoary head full of resentments and

smoldering hates. His cigars trailed orange eyes in the blue

     living room, wrote indecipherable notes in the lonely gloom.

He never traveled far. At Disneyland, he stayed

     in the car.  I thought he was rain clouds and mud and

bitter sadness. Even at eight, I knew how that tasted.

     One night, he turned to me and smiled, and wondered,

again, why he couldn’t die.

April 7, 2014