Who will mend this broken chair
This useless one just standing there
Waiting for a drop of glue
Who will mend it, if not you?

Then take this lonesome broken heart
Can you fathom where to start
Who can make it beat anew
Who can mend it, if not you?

Near frost early morning,
Packed bags squeeze
Into the old Oldsmobile,
Ready to leave for college.

I kiss my mother,
Say good-bye,
Hold her tight.

My father passes us,
Moving over stones,
Carrying two buckets
On his way to cows
And milking.

I can't see his face...
Have no idea.

"Art, are you going to say good-bye?"
I hear my mother say.

The words arrest him.
All movement stops.
Shoulders hunched,
He slowly sets the buckets down.

Turning is an agony,
I see,
As though his efforts
Somehow jar the world,
Disrupt natural order, and
Acknowledge chaos come at last.

I see my father's face
Coursing silent tears,
And watch his shoulders shake.
Then we embrace,
We two,
And both are torn
With leaving.

I know with certainty
My father's love
This morning,
Leaving home.

(1978, leaving for college)

I have several poems started
But none of them want to come to completion
They all keep dodging my pen

Hunkered down we pass the plonk
We can see Madame and pay
We shake her hand and thank her
San fairy ann she'll say

Sergeant copped a blighty
He'll be on his way
He's thanking god almighty
San fairy ann I say

It's hard enough to smile through this
When folks get blown up every day
But all the while the whizz-bangs miss
San fairy ann we say