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