I very much like to read this touching poem of Hank Blackwell to my gone icon, my Father. I wish I could personally read it to him or probably at least send it to him in form of a handwritten letter, and not an email!, when he was here with us. Alas!
Read him the poem, just to let him know what a lovely and adorable “stranger” my father was to me as Blackwell’s father sounds to have been to him through his passing Rainbow-like childhood.
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Rainbows
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Wherever you go.
However far away it is.
Take my love
on your shoulders, riding
as I did
down those steep trails to our fishing place.
(The only times I remember embracing you as a child)
Smelling the cigarette smoke, the sweat
the canvas vest
like perfume,
the smell of a father
to a son.
Whenever you go,
cast away your silent desperation
like a dry fly into the current.
I will probably walk those trails
when you
are gone…
crying, remembering how you were
during those magical times.
I felt your body move as it carried me
down to the river;
you in search of trout
me, hoping the trail
would never end.
You will die a stranger to me.
Unable to attend to my desires
as a son,
I wished you could as gentle with me
as you were
when trying a fisherman’s knot to the hook.
Perhaps I don’t go fishing now because I fear
the intrusion of those trips we made or
confusing fragmented memories of them…
Only the two of us
down that steep rocky trail
into the gorge.
You fishing for trout,
me… for you.
I hoped you would look my way
and leave the rod,
the line and little fly,
and reel me in.
When you go even as a stranger
I will always hold those few trips
like rainbows, in my little creel,
and I will remember you
carrying me down that trail….
Hank Blackwell
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