Hank
by James Coburn
My father barely spoke a word.
I heard him roll rubber bands
down inky, dry newspapers;…
saw him sip black coffee,
while covered in wheat dust,
pass communion,
read books of the wild West.
I didn’t know much about him,
but knew everything he could give
across a big wooden desk.
Sharing work lunch,
his white coffee cup stained.
Silent laughter, clear blue eyes
for cameras, developing photographs.
Can a smile be so quiet?
First of nine children to come,
he spoke of his parents
1920’s belongings weighed down their truck,
chugging up river. Crossing a dried-up river
Somehow. I never knew.
His father headed for the oil fields
of Drumright.
At 57, Hank’s arms shoveled flood water
from windows under empty wheat bins.
Rubber boots sloshed toward scampering rats,
squeaky gray belts caked in dust,
dead spiders clinging to cobwebs.
Wheat dust in nostrils, brown beads of spit.
On weekends, he lifted me in his arms,
from a white 1959 Pontiac,
putting me in bed after drive-in movie.
Rustling leaves, fireflies and crickets.
Few words spoken the next morning.
I couldn’t call him “dad”. Others called him “Hank.”
He taught me to ride a bike
the summer day he pounded nails in a roof.
But his silence made life bittersweet;
silence as dark as the universe I question.
I held his hand, taking me outside my 5-year-old self
to the highest edge of the grain elevator.
No rail.
He jumped on box cars rolling with wheat,
turned the brake, started the auger.
I did the same at 19. Harvest mornings into night
Sixteen hours of sweat.
My bare shoulder,
a ledge for rats in concrete tunnel.
jumping on upward-bound pulley,
my feet off the brakes, hands on rope.
All quiet into winter as apricot tree flowered in spring.
Rotten wheat bins to clean.
Solitary voice reverberated Macbeth in bins of putrid air.
A shovel ready in the Cold War fallout shelter.
Bombs never came, only fallout.
Dust. Alzheimer’s disease.
Connections on riverbeds
receding from their banks.
“You’re not James.”
“I’ve lost my peace of mind.”
“I’ve been to the moon.”
My mother there with cancer.
“Let me know if there is anything I can do,” he said.
“I pray for you sometimes,” he said to me one night,
transcending between days of little deaths.
