Father, I am Waiting by the River
Trevor Spangle
Smashwords Edition
Copyright ©2009 Trevor Spangle
All Rights Reserved
Cover Design by Joel P. West
www.otherrivers.com
To my Mother,
“I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.”
-John Steinbeck
Contents
Salmon Egg Salvation
Before Immaculata
Directions for a Caesarean
Raised in a Pew
Portrait of a Sportswoman
Fruits of my Seed
Night Light Burning Out
For Cameron, My Cabin Mate, My Friend
Blended Family
Preparing for an Estate Sale
An Angel Came
Saints & Sinners
Ode to Bulldog
Christmas with Adeline
Avenida Revolución
Uncomfortable Bed
Leaving My Birthday Early in San Diego
Passed out on Burnside
17 Bus, Holgate
Late Night Sobriety
Poem in Hindsight, Attempting Foresight
Portrait of father and Son
Garibaldi, Oregon
Drinking Coffee after Fishing
Traveling Alone on Hwy 34
Portrait of a Sportsman
Father, I am Waiting by the River
At Waterloo
Graveyard of the Pacific
My Father’s Garden
Glass Empty at the Kitchen Table
Birthright
To Lose One’s Bastardness
Letter to my Son
Salmon Egg Salvation
Before Immaculata
The fertile fields of the west dreamed of your tiny bare feet
running over their quilted landscape and playing tag in the cemetery
at night in Weaverville. They felt the painful scars of burnt tire tread
callusing their virgin highways, the hordes of families driving
west from Oklahoma with you, just a thought, in the back
of a beaten up Ford. Before your mother gave you a bob cut
to keep the hair out of your eyes while you chased boys
innocently through the neighborhood, your breasts ripening
like olives. Before your limbs grew heavy and ready for harvest,
back arched, hidden inside his leaky canopy, you broke
a sweat, collapsed into his arms and trembled, and I was
begot into our Family. Before Mary and Joseph-
complex, beautiful humans-were conceived, I knew
there were prophets and saints I would read, their spirits
incarnated within cigarettes, drinking, fishing, women, stories
of travel, and history. They would lead me to hide my faith
half-heartedly because I knew I wasn’t living like I should. Listening
to their prophecies: the pain of heartache and crying; Sunday morning
head buzzes and hugging the toilet late at night, swearing
to never drink again; throwing away my third flask into the ocean,
drunk on a bluff in San Diego while the cab driver waits and watches
confused; seeing a Sturgeon murdered in the back of my step-dad’s boat,
Adeline, blood leaking from her body; and me drunk and feeling guilty
on a bar stool by noon, limited out on the day’s catch;
I made a promise to not hold you accountable, Mother,
as I watch you in the early morning wrap my cold body in a blanket
after swing shift, your uniform smelling like a cornucopia of that week’s
production run, and carry me to bed with dreams of snow laden evergreens
in winter, the Santiam River, and a lonesome man walking its banks
in a foggy shroud of moonlight, looking for something he dropped.
Directions for a Caesarean
Cut her open like rain fall
washing away brittle soil.
Water her with morphine,
aerate her with a spinal tap.
Look into her eyes, sponge the tears
swelling up like a desert spring.
Peel open her cambium, see inside
the fragile bulb taken root, stuck
between the crown and birth canal,
fighting the light of the arboretum.
Catch her blood in goblets. Staple her up
like empty autumn grape vines spread
across the rolling hills of the valley.
Feed her bread while she nurses.
Raised in a Pew
1. The congregation claps in rhythm with the choir, but I hide
my hands in my pockets fiddling with a cigarette I stole
from a lonely black purse in the front pew. My Grandmother
standing reverently, her head bowed and eyes open, watches
my Grandfather kneeling at the altar. Drunk in the Spirit,
the preacher jumps up and down, raises his hands, shouts
in other tongues that frighten five year old me. Swollen red eyes
littering the altar, the choir drowns in the sobs of sinners.
The cigarette I stole burns a hole in my pocket while
my nerves begin twitching with conviction. Still, the Spirit speaks:
Trevor, are you frightened?
Yes, Lord.
I am sorry.
It’s ok.
I love you.
Watching my Grandfather kneel at the altar, eyes affixed to the cross,
I hear the choir singing while tears run down his face. Forgive me,
Father, I hear, Forgive me. In confusion, I have learned to draw
on white scratch paper my Grandmother keeps in her purse for me.
On top of leather bound hymnals I scribble pictures of the crucifix
and monster trucks. Sometimes I open the hymnals, connecting
the quarter notes like dots.
2. Seven years old, I’m kneeling at my Grandmother’s couch.
She’s watching the television, an old re-run of 700 Club, while I am trying
to desperately plead with God, “Don’t let me have a cavity. Please,
don’t let me have a cavity.”
I hear His still, small voice, coming through like static,
You should have flossed, my son.
You should have flossed.
3. Every other day, my Grandmother took my hand and we walked
down Vine Street, making a right on Fifth Street, and taking a short cut
past a mannequin factory making archery targets, scruffy men stand outside,
leaning against their pickups and smoking cigarettes on break.
Inside the library, I remember smelling the odor of old books
and the chemicals mixing together across the street to form Elk.
I’ve learned that you trust me, Grandmother, to wander on my own
among the shelves of books. I see you reading Christian fiction
about Cowboys and Indians, a Western Jihad of sorts.
I have copies of The Boxcar Children and Runaway Ralph under my arm.
I envy their adventures. You envy the cowboy’s courage for Christ.
4. It wakes me up again, this dream I’ve been having, where I’m stranded
on a small sandy beach in the middle of a river, surrounded by sky scrapers
and boat taxis honking their horns and telling me to get in or get out
of the way. Some nights I curl myself up in a ball, try to start a fire,
and pass out alone listening to an owl hooting in a nearby tree-who
only shows up maybe every other dream. Other nights, my pockets
are full of gold and I tell the driver to take me wherever-show me the sites,
and he does. On Broadway Street, a homeless man jumps in and rides along
some nights, singing Frank Sinatra tunes and bumming smokes. I give him two
when I get out to hold him over, not sure when I will see him next. But always,
the driver drops me off on Burnside Street and there is an older man with a cane,
sitting on a blue five gallon bucket with a sign that says “Lord’s a Coming.”
We’re on our way to hell! he shouts from the corner block, then points at me,
YOU are on your way to hell! And I am awake and afraid to go get a drink of water.
5. Back home I sit on Grandmother’s lap in the recliner next to the piano
where she taught me to sing the C scale. She’s reading a book to me,
vivid images in my mind that I see, but can’t hear because I’m distracted
by shouts from the backroom where Grandfather watches television.
Grandma, what’s it about, I ask. Whispering,
she says with her hand on her heart.
Listen.
Carefully.
Portrait of a Sportswoman
She opens her tackle box, neatly organized, sorting
through lures and bobbers. Looking up at me
with a smile on her face. She begins to bait my hook,
and I feel warm though our breaths blossom from our mouths
early in the morning. Without her, I wouldn’t have seen
the trout hidden beneath the fallen pine tree, shadowed
in the translucent water kissing my black rubber boots
on the bank. I squirm at the bright red blood of the salmon egg
dripping on my mittens as she fits it on the hook I hold
in my palm carefully. Turning over the bail, I look up
once more at my mother grinning, hand on my shoulder.
Cast right out there, she says, pointing where the water is calm.
Right there? My voice vibrates the line. Putting her finger to her lips,
We whisper, she says, as not to scare the fish.
Fruits of my Seed
Blonde hairs grow under my arm
and between my legs in the mirror
while I hide in the bathroom. They grow
off my face soft and thick.
I wake up to wet stained sheets, shivering
in the cold that has penetrated my bedroom.
I have seen this before, somewhere, and I worry
I’m developing into a man like my father.
My shoulders, a disgrace to good posture,
blossomed from his seed. My eyes, blue,
like the Toyota I see him drive through town
occasionally. When he has his license.
When he’s healthy. When he’s sober.
Nightlight Burning Out
She catches me in the dark, hands hidden
beneath the blanket. I freeze, heart racing and hard.
She flickers as if she’s flirting. Are you a girl
angel, I ask. Will you lay your hands on me?
I need prayer. My Mother is lonesome and caught me drawing
naughty pictures of the neighbor lady. Lately, in my dreams,
I’m swimming upstream towards a silhouette I recognize.
I try to call to him, Father, Sir, Whoever You Are,
but he is in a boat, and rows faster and faster each night.
I’m too young to be having dreams where I wake up wet
and breathing heavy, kicking my legs against the current
of my sheets. Will you lay with me in the dark? Whisper
that song Grandmother used to sing me, I have forgotten it.
Hold me until my Mother gets here to take me home.
For Cameron, My Cabin Mate, My Friend
Kneeling at the altar, crying and weeping,
pleading with the Lord to wash my sins
away, eaves dropping on the girl kneeling
next to me, the preacher lays his hand on her
head and I watch hesitantly as he parts her
dark brown hair, anointing her with oil that smells
like my new aunt no one talks to. My step-dad says
it’s because “she’s high all the time.” Swaying,
shaking, crying, I begin to worry about her falling.
I want to reach out and catch her, but I’m too late.
She looks like a child, curled up in front of the pulpit
laying on the floor. Back in cabin 7, we tell stories
after chapel. One boy says, God told me to be
a pastor tonight, and we all become jealous of him.
Another boy says he feels like he is being drawn
to the ministry too, but not sure where. I joke
he should be a fisherman, and everyone laughs
at me. A fisherman can’t be a witness,
they’re liars. I tell them
that I was filled with the Holy Ghost.
They become jealous, and I savor it. In the dark,
we grow tired, slide inside our sleeping bags,
and begin telling ghost stories instead,
our flashlights illuminate our young faces
The cabin roof glows with frightened halos above our heads.
Blended Family
This first part is hard to remember, or rather
I’m still not sure what it means or how to say it:
My mother stands at the altar dressed in white.
I’m wearing a tuxedo, a first for me at nine,
and I’m holding a little pillow with rings on it.
There’s my step-dad, my step-brother, my step-sister.
We’re all standing. Someone is singing Randy Travis’
Forever and Ever, Amen. A minister announces
them as man and wife, and at nine years old,
I have no clue what that means. I remember crying though,
feeling happy for my mother. Even though I struggle
with understanding the joys of a relationship today, I remember
trying to fight back the tears, keep my composure, and losing.
I remember seeing my mother cry. From what I knew of love,
seeing the way he looked into her eyes, it would last. Three weeks
later, in our one bathroom house I have to piss like crazy.
I can’t wait for my step-dad to get done showering.
Silently, I crack open the door, entering a veil of steam,
sliding silently across the linoleum in my socks. Curious,
I pause, sneak a peek behind the curtain, and watch a naked man
layered in soap suds begin to undress himself under the shower head,
revealing a sweater of hair, and a pair of woven briefs. I am intrigued
and frightened by our bodies-their similarities, their differences,
the sheer resilience of a vulnerable man bathing in lukewarm water.
Preparing for an Estate Sale
After my Grandmother’s wake,
digging through a pile
of papers on top of her
coffee table, I found
a little scrap that read
Help
Help
My Heart Hurts
Help,
in shaky, scattered, hand writing.
I crack a bottle of her Bourbon,
the label split and peeling,
and try to write a poem making sense
of this evening, searching for understanding,
in the lowlight of a candle burning.
An Angel Came
She said,
repeat after me: love.
No; with a capital L.
Try Mother.
Father.
Love.
God.
Whiskey.
Try this one, Deciduous.
Fishing.
Lying.
Again, Mother.
Now, Evergreen.
Let it whisper off your heart.
Saints & Sinners
Ode to Bulldog
I remember the first time
I met you; you were drunk
and already I knew most
everything about you.
Your beard was long, haggard,
and mangled, an American flag
spread across the face
of your hat. You opened up
your wallet, insisting to pay
for your meal, and I saw
three twenty dollar bills
nestled against a few ones.
Then you rode away on
your bike, your life on two wheels
with homemade saddlebags
fashioned from five gallon buckets.
I asked you once
where your home was, before
the Santiam River took you home.
You looked at me like I was
an asshole because you knew that
I knew by the river, underneath
Grant Street Bridge, was your home.
But you smiled with wit
in the corner of your mouth and said
to me patiently, “I live nowhere particular.
This whole world is my home.”
Christmas with Adeline
We won’t be getting silver dollars
From you this Christmas wrapped
In scotch tape, but we will be
Drinking scotch and laughing around
The fire, the heat warm against
Our faces. We’ll toast to hummingbirds,
Alsea River salmon, and your jet-black hair
You dyed all those years. We’ll watch films
Move as light through time, one reel
After another. The men will sneak out
To smoke cigarettes, show off the new boat,
And crack a bottle of brandy on her bow.
Avenida Revolución
A few blocks over the border,
the streets of Tijuana are littered
with mediocre mariachi bands
in the markets. They say,
Just a Mexican minute, hoping
for a quick buck. Out of conviction
I toss loose change into the brim
of a sombrero, and dance in the street
at midnight, drunk. I was set up
on Avenida Revolución once: Sir, don’t move!
I hear in perfect English. My drunken ears afraid
listening to their orders, my eyes blinded
in their flashing white lights, they spread my legs
apart, pat me down, hand cuff me, slug me
onto the hood of a dirty cop car. In the back seat,
they ask:
What’s your name Sir?
John Steinbeck.
Where are you from?
Salinas Valley.
Why are you here?
To learn. To drink.
Uncomfortable Bed
“When I gave up trying to love myself,
There were some nights I would slip out
Of my body, ease my back up against the wall,
And watch myself making love to a stranger,
Both of us drunk and calloused. Searching
In the dark for protection, I keep my face hidden,
Avoid eye contact, speak little at all. Like others
I had been with before, it was routine-start small
Talk, take some shots, tell a couple lies about
Something you never did in your entire life,
Anything. Tell her how you feel exactly
The same way she does. Backed up against the wall,
I can almost read my prepared script, begging
Her to get on top, then bottom, then back on top-
I’m never quite certain what I want-and I end
Up watching myself root around like a dirty swine