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“The sadness washed over him
Like the fading light of a desert sunset.”
It was one of the most beautiful things
I had ever heard.
My father painted a thousand pictures
With his every word.
My father read the first short story of mine
That he actually liked.
And I sat across from him, mesmerized
As he gave me so much advice on how to improve it.
He read me back one of the lines
Prefacing it with a look that conveyed, “This just doesn’t seem right”
“He felt the sadness wash over him
Like waves over a lonely beach.”
It was my cliched recipe for a simile with vivid imagery
To convey the heartbreak of a man who holds his fallen wife
In his arms
Sobbing uncontrollably.
My father suggested this simile as its replacement,
“The sadness washed over him
Like the fading light of a desert sunset.”
It came out all in one breath.
It was perfect.
He understood how I had wasted my simile
With imagery that was of no relation to the story.
The desert was where the story took place,
All metaphors and similes should live in that desert.
He fixed it.
My father could always fix things.
I have seen sunshine wash over the land.
Lakes, rivers, and streams
Of golden luminescence
Running away from the darkness
Of the oncoming night – -
That is always coming…
My father understood death.
He also loved nature.
The sadness washes over me with the memory
Of the first sunset I had ever watched in its entirety
Alone.
When I came home I wanted to share the feelings
That sunset had stirred inside of me
The insight that it had provided me
And I saw that my father was asleep.
He was so physically close
But so infinitely out of reach.
I still feel the sun’s shine.
I also remember how my father
Would always come home
Worn out after hours of overtime
Or being called in on a day he had off.
He would always encourage me to learn.
My father was the one who got me to read Steinbeck.
Human drama stretched across the vastness
Of the land.
Salinas, some parts dry as a desert,
Like the fading light of a desert sunset.
The sadness washes over me
Washed down
With the tequila and whiskey
That some of my father’s favorite characters drink
In his favorite book, Tortilla Flat, by Steinbeck.
This was my father’s vision of poetry:
No good drunkards
Awaiting the desert dawn,
The night soon gone,
Three of the characters have a conversation
About the stars and the meaning of life,
Suprisingly heartfelt,
Unexpected from these rough men,
While the rest of their friends are passed out on their lawn.
A late night of excitement,
Of there-ness
And now-ness
Of the possibility of a nowhere galaxy,
Held swiring in their glasses,
As crisp as the night air,
Real.
As real as my father’s memory
Of being in the army
And having a similar experience with some friends
Atop the old barracks overlooking the vastness
Of Oklahoma,
During his training.
He reflected, that some of those friends, would soon die.
To open the book to that chapter…
Somewhere in space
My father still sits atop those barracks
Awaiting a dawn that is always coming…
True beauty can only be fleeting
As are all the greatest moments of our lives.
As are our lives themselves…
Like the fading light of a desert sunset.
My father so clearly understood that
And yet he would say to me
That he was just a simple man.
No poet.
No artist.
I did not understand.
I continue to refuse to.
My father continually told me he was just a simple man.
Nonsense.
Whether as the lonely man,
Or, in a circle of friends:
Cigarettes burn to their stubs and ash.
Bottles become empty.
Wood fires burn out, even if slowly.
People die, whether together or lonely.
The sun dies, slowly, every day.
As does the night to the day.
Sometimes, I cry for him.
For such fleeting moments.
I cry for the work of the greatest poet
And artist who had ever lived.
My father painted a thousand pictures
With his every word.
My father once read
The first short story of mine
That he actually liked,
He suggested this simile,
“The sadness washed over him
Like the fading light of a desert sunset.”
He said it all in one breath.
It was perfect.
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