Tim Tipton

The Conversation

Why can’t we talk? I asked my father last night

Is it because you refuse to,

and I think you are a foreign language

I can not understand

Is it because I hate your heavy sighs,

And you can’t take the curl of my

lip on the receiver

I said in revolt,

Fathers and sons are suppose to have conversations,

Why can’t we have one?

He said,

fathers and sons are not supposed to have

conversations, they're supposed to understand

each other, smile and walk along railroad

tracks in the sun, and throw rocks in the water.

But we never did those things,

Does that mean we have nothing to say?

My first memory of him was holding me

up to the light that poured through the window.

Grandpa’s Hands

Kind, old, tan from the hot sun

They told more than his face did about life

and where he had traveled in his eighty years.

His hands open, never closed, masterful in finding lost gems,

making fishing lures and carving something

out of wood to last forever.

I grew up wanting to have those hands

Touching earth, arranging space

I found it natural when his hand held mine

 

My New suit

is expensive and cherished

the pattern reminds me of the Mediterranean Sea,

the deep blue of certain waves

strung with the crisscross quivering

colors of the settling sun