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| My parents, Milford Hill and Adelina Ortiz, Wedding Day |
My father died before I could appreciate him. I was seventeen when I moved in with him, young and angry, although that's no excuse. I looked down on his alcoholism and his chain-smoking and the fact that he could not love himself.
When I was younger, my father made a living wage. However, having a family of six children and one income, we were lower middle class in my first few years. When I was nine, my parents divorced. The four boys, aged three to ten, went with my mother. We lived in poverty with my mother's low wages as a preschool teaching assistant. Soon, she went to college and with those expenses and no income beyond a meager alimony and student loans we continued in poverty while she got her bachelor's and then master's degree.
Coming upon my senior year in high school, my mother sent me to live with my father, citing financial reasons.
My father's father was a career petty criminal, abandoning his family. He died while trying to escape prison. I didn't recognize how much that had hurt my father. His first step-dad was an alcoholic who beat him. His second step-dad was not much better. His third step-dad brought some stability, but by then my father had dropped out of high school. He returned, was permitted to take the final exams, and passed.
My father was very bright, bookish. Though lacking a college education, through self-will and voracious studying he worked his way from being a social worker helping disabled and veterans to being in charge of the entire Los Angeles area. He always cared for those who were vulnerable.
His sacrifice and alcohol and nicotine took a toll on his body. One year after the divorce he had a heart attack. Seven years later, when I moved in, he was sick. Each day, he would tell me he would die. I refused to believe he was so sick. I was angry at him for being weak. I didn't see his great love, his self-wounding for others. For his children.
When I was eighteen, after I moved away from home, he died.
Pond Life
(For my father.)
The needlegrass swims with the loons in the lake.
The sun looking down doesn't know what to make of me.
. . .I'm standing here guarding the gutter.
A lattice of roots sutures the soil
My shadow hangs ragged, stitched to my hide.
The treetops are splinters from when they were crewcut
Each spine had been forged by the sun.
Their prickles have shredded the shade.
And the needlegrass swims with the moon in the lake
While the loon left behind spins grooves in its wake
And I'm sitting here guarding my gutter.
I can't think of themes, don't ask me for themes.
My head's full of empties—
. . .how dare you accuse me of truth?
And the smoke tumbles up
While the sky tumbles down
And the shadows blow off with the breeze.
Now the needlegrass slips from the grooves of the pond
And the disc of the moon becomes new when it's gone.
I'm lying here guarding my grave.
And even though frozen, I bleed through my gauze.
I'm soaked to my gills and yet dying of thirst
While I wait for the shades that pursue me.
A skimming rock skips on the face of the ice of the pond through the dusk into
winter through night into night and I'm standing here, sitting here, lying ....
I've fallen through the ice
To find no lake beneath.
I've rolled the holy dice.
I've worn smiles made of teeth.
Smiles made of teeth.
The Day Louis Armstrong Died
My father wore his sorrow like a hundred millstone weight.
I seldom saw him angry and I never saw him hate.
And though he dressed for mourning, I only saw him cry
Once in anguish, once for love, and once when Louis Armstrong died.
This song is for a miner's son, sung in a minor key;
Whose purposes and promises for life would never be.
Some dreams he'd given up on and still others he denied.
And all of them returned to him the day King Louis died.
When time was once upon a time, when blue moons bloomed:
In June of 1950, he became the perfect groom.
He promised half-formed dreams beneath his half-closed lids.
They disembarked and, for their mark, left half a dozen kids.
In June of sixty-eight my mother took the kids away.
I saw my father kneel and sob, begging her to stay.
He died that afternoon even though his body lived.
He took to drink with the creed: forget first, then forgive.
In summer seventy-one on our annual vacation
When our meetings were constrained to rights of visitation.
We headed off to Flagstaff, to see his boyhood town.
Even the asphalt sweated as the desert sun beat down.
We walked beside the railroad tracks where once he'd gathered coal.
Along the desert's rim we found a rattler's sun-bleached skull.
He took us to the tenement where he and grandma stayed.
He drove us by the gravel pit where as a child he played.
That night outside our cheap motel a neon scribble shone
While from the local FM station country music droned.
Then the deejay's voice broke in saying Louis Armstrong died.
I watched as for the second time I saw my father cry.
I can only half-suppose the bond between the two:
The trumpet blown with lively notes ransomed from the blue.
Perhaps the rhythms carried him back to a land of dreams
When life marched in rhythm and love was what it seemed.
But this world isn't for the faint: and when his heart attacked
He coughed up blood and downed more drink to fight his demons back.
Once, as he filled his whiskey glass, he wept for where he'd sunk,
And asked me if it hurt to have a father who's a drunk.
The human soul is only built to hold so many notes.
My father's breath became a fist, it clenched inside his throat.
No, this world isn't made of mercy: so when my father died
I looked into his casket but somehow I couldn't cry.
An angel is an angel still, by any other name.
There'll be no more excuses when we find we're all the same.
The reasons to strive for heaven are the people that we'll meet:
With Louis playing trumpet and my father at his feet.
Links to my writing are at mdhillortiz.com
