The Victorian Age

seems so far away. & yet, in terms of my personal continuity, it is not that distant. One jump.

My father was born on this day in 1898. A toehold in the 19^th Century, nearly 90 years in the 20^th. I, 60 years in the 20^th Century, & now a leg, I reckon, into the 21^st.

I inherited from him—nurture—his strong sense of ethics &—nature—his thinning hair pattern. He provided a comfortable life for his family, though the age difference between he & I meant that we didn't communicate all that well.

He once read Kerouac's The Subterraneans in an attempt to "understand me", only to find he didn't understand Kerouac.

I have rarely written about him, maybe once or twice. The only lines I remember are part of one of my Series Magritte poems, The Liberator.

I see echoes of my father
also. Non-Italian. Freemason.
The attache case with the regalia
hidden inside, the pearled
candelabra reminding me
of jewels & embroidered
aprons. He never talked to me
about it. I never asked. He
never talked because I didn’t
ask. I never asked because
he never talked about it. Round
& round. We never came close.

         *

Never a liberator. Quite
the reverse. A tight hold
on the family. Rationed
freedom. We escaped by
becoming birds or keys or
pipes or wineglasses. Every-
day objects that could always
be replaced. He never
noticed. The space inside
the outline is as it has always
been, a shadow of himself, how
he’d always seen us. The
eyes in the pearled lorgnette
are mother’s eyes. She is
held tightly. A second cane.