This Week's Poem of the Day

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This Week's Poem of the Day is from John Lyons, first published in North 43 and later in his new and selected poems, No Apples in Eden (Smith/Doorstop, 2009).

A POEM FOR MY FATHER

You lived a peculiar independence,
you, the progeny of slaves
scarred with a history perpetrated
in killing cane fields.
I watched you,
amazed at your well mannered poise.
Was this mute rage against them
who offered baubles as gems,
vinegar as water?
There were some
who thought you learned too easily
to hold your tongue between teeth,
to wear too comfortably in the sun's burning
your three piece suit.
There were others who greeted you
with a conditioned respect:
they looked up to you, called you, sir,
cowed by your cultivated Englishness.
Yet you took no vacations abroad.
You cobbled morning, noon and night,
work was a striding to your grave.
All you bequeathed was the memory
of your ways.

— John Lyons (No Apples in Eden, Smith/Doorstop, 2009)

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