How the Son Thanks the Father

Last summer in Seattle

In the scudding air

Off Admiralty Inlet

Under a huge old tree

With cones big as

Pineapples

That dropped sometimes

While we sat

And made the three-legged cat

Look up

While we sat

In the backyard

In aluminum-tube

Sears Roebuck lawn chairs

With ragged green plastic straps

In the backyard

Of my widowed father's

Trim blue house

In his blue-collar neighborhood

I said

I was glad he

Moved us from Arkansas

In a black

Bonnie and Clyde sedan

Fugitives

From a dead dusty

Leafless and

Droughted South

With piles of pillows

And oranges

And bologna

And Wonder bread

Almost nonstop

From outside Little Rock

When I was five

I said

Feel that breeze.

Structure

37 lines · 2 stanzas