Sunday, September 30, 2018



Lincoln, Nebraska, USA 2018


  Past Passing at Present
A shoe and its weathered sole, 
and a hole in the soul of my being 
seeing what in truth was leaving 
so long        gone. 

My father wanted me to see him. 
Simply      see him. 
To accept him for who he was. 
The He of past tense 
somehow more substantial than 
his presence within this present.
Hence, he would have me see him whole, 
and that whole of him 
would include that of he as child. 

One hour further into our future, 
we arrive there at his birth. 
Rather, there at the place of his birth. 
Tired tread across gravel less traveled, 
we pull up full stop, and 
a plume of grey dust there 
descends upon our heads. 
And as such silt settles 
upon both his boots and mine, 
we ingest motes of memory mined 
from a long distant youth. 

There upon hill, a house and a home. 
There down below, 
a barnyard and its cattle-tank. 
Said bovine vessel of some eight foot expanse, 
before which my father soon comes to stand. 

“We use to swim in this tank,” 
his hand gesture there reflected 
in the water’s still surface. 
And there he is further reflected, 
so much younger then than I in this now. 
He, his sister and brothers—
they on a hot summer’s day, 
thrashing about in that water 
while cows stand off in the distance, 
waiting their allotted time perchance 
to taste this essence of childhood. 

There my father dunking a brother; 
there my father splashing his sister. 
He as small boy submerging; 
he as my father emerging; 
he now catfish flounder, 
there to flip and upend 
over the cattle-tank’s rim, 
and out onto the hardpack 
sprawling at our feet. 
And with a ripple of skin 
and fan of his fins, 
he sprays us in his spittled wake 
as he dashes toward the house. 

And as a certain youth’s passing 
comes to evaporate there before us, 
my father and I follow its path 
up to the clapboard structure 
ensconced at the top of the hill. 

Passing to the house’s far side, 
I’m shocked to see that well over 
a third of the structure has collapsed 
and imploded inward. 
Before I can ask, 
my father blurts, 
“Tornado.      Big one.  
Couple of years back.” 

And though the house exists 
mostly as a twisted sculpture of 
strewn and splintered wood, 
I ask if I might look about inside. 
“Oh no,” he responds. “No. There’s 
   a woman who lives in there.” 

And in awe, I come to wonder 
whether just such a woman 
abides within that present tense 
or some lesser   disturbed past. 
Whether her psyche is supple and sound, 
or therein lies collapsed amidst 
the further ruin of a decimated mind. 

Passing on to the far side of the house, 
my father guides me down to 
a dried up creek bed and the 
stand of straggled trees which line
its long forgotten purpose. 
Presently we pause beneath a 
substantial time-hewn oak 
whose tangled boughs reach forth 
to eclipse the far bank and beyond. 

And there as hands expand 
to frame the base of this ancient tree, 
the composure upon my father’s face 
returns to that of the puckish boy 
reborn to his huckleberry youth. 
Some sense of pending intimacy 
conveyed from this wag-tailed whelp 
now far younger than myself. 

And here his hand comes to point 
to one large root of which 
the flow of the creek 
had long ago washed away 
its surrounding dirt. 
“There… 
    That hole...” 
and he extends his hand 
toward the circular gap. 
“We use to crawl through that hole,’ 
   and he winks,
“It was our secret tunnel.” 

And I find myself gazing 
at how small the opening is; 
at how small a boy would have to be 
to crawl through its pint-size portal. 

And there’s my father 
standing just beside me. 
And there he is upon tattered knees, 
barefoot in a child’s bib overalls, 
with his head passing 
through this womb of root; 
through its vaginal girth 
and my father’s re-birth.

And moving to the tree’s far side, 
I look for this one boy’s emergence, 
only there to find my father laid out 
   on a stainless steel gurney. 

That which was him 
now draped in funeral cloth 
and looking rather smaller 
than I as his son 
           remember him. 

2018 Jack David Hubbell