My dad
a tired old guy
drinking **** warm beer
one can after another
in a basement refuge
he called The Shop

He was kind
but very quiet
His silence
a gift of the War
and its visible
atrocities

He didn't spend much time
upstairs
with the rest of us
but we could always
enter his domain
of cigarette smoke
and beery mist
to panhandle some change
or just sit with him
in the half darkness
listening to baseball
on the radio

Until the day
his liver
generated
another
final
plan