this is what happens
when we fail to understand
the value of life.

resist the contempt
bred by familiarity;
just appreciate.

image: Denise Gould

I pulled into the parking lot at 10 a.m. Sunday morning. Before even getting out of the car, I noticed the bike with the fendered 26-inch wheels, old-fashioned handlebars, overstuffed seat and more improvised saddlebags than I thought a bike could hold. It occupied a good portion of the sidewalk leading to the front door of the restaurant. It was a slightly odd sight in this neighborhood, one comprising almost entirely middle to upper class residents. And within three seconds of entering the establishment, I could identify the bike’s owner.

There in the northwest corner of the place, sat a wiry, 40-something caucasian male with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and matching stubble. He wore stained khaki workpants, a greasy t-shirt, worn cross-trainers and a weak smile he flashed intermittently at the service staff as they moved between the kitchen and the dining area, shooting not so subtle glances at him. Upon seeing his smile, the thing that struck me was how straight and clean his teeth appeared to be.

It made me wonder where he’d come from - more demographically than geographically. Against the backdrop of a fairly upscale Sunday morning crowd mostly attired in church clothes, he struck me as someone who could rather easily be transformed into one of them, at least on the surface.

Was he a recent victim of the economic downturn, or was he a foreigner to this middle class world? Did he look at the rest of us, knowing what our lives were like? Did he flash that fleeting smile because he knew the restaurant service staff and patrons who seemed to look down on him were really only a few steps from his circumstance?

Being only ten years younger than him at the most, I thought about how slight a twist of fate it would take to find myself in his tattered shoes.

a man of substance,
eschewing symbology,
shows love quietly.

On Father’s Day I wanted to creep back into the habit of expressing something relevant about my father.

It’s funny how most of what I admire about my father revolves around the concept of quiet expressions of love through action. Maybe it fascinates me because it goes against the grain of what I tend to do when I write. No matter what words I can manage, they will pale against the profound eloquence of those simple, often selfless actions that have been the hallmark of my father’s life as I’ve observed it.

So before I muddy it up with any more flailing attempts at eloquence, I just want to say thanks to my father, and wish all the other dads out there a great Father’s Day.

the leaning maple
appears to be faltering
even as it blooms.

*
Thanks to Shelley for kindly offering to exchange seed words. She sent “leaning” my way, and I burdened her with “rejuvenation” (and she made pretty good use of it). Oops, I actually burdened her with “regeneration” - she still did well with it.

it would have taken
so much less effort to be
“dad” in name only.

Tags: fathers day, appreciation

As I sneak my Father’s Day post just under the wire this year…

The following is from a Father’s Day meditation I posted two years ago:

My father’s not a loud man, not one to boast, even when he’s right and everyone else is pretty much wrong. In my youth I mistook his humility for weakness, but now I realize that the measured approach he took with life’s little twists and turns is what helped him not turn and run when times were tough. He taught me, among other things, that love requires humility (sometimes even humiliation) and that strength is more often demonstrated through patience than through brute force.

He has always been on the quieter side of things, revealing a sense of manhood that can’t be mimicked with the chest-beating machismo so often mistaken for manliness. Physically, he’s always been a strong man, but his intellectual depth and perspective are what have impressed me most as I’ve grown older, and some might even say, wiser.

Or in the words of Robert Hayden: (more…)

Tags: father’s day, Robert Hayden poetry, Those Winter Sundays