What Light: This Week’s Poem: Tim Brennan
Tim J. Brennan is the sixth poet chosen in this once-a-week yearlong survey of Minnesotas poets and their work. The series is sponsored by Magers & Quinn Booksellers.
vanishing point
in late evenings
from my screen porch
where i summer slept,
i could see father’s
upper floor bed light,
its tiny shards tossing
light shafts into tall
spiraled oak trees,
beams bouncing infinitely
into night black air
often times, i could hear
mother’s asthma breath
soft calling his name; i imagined
her touching his darkness
with powdered hands
from the roundhouse yard
two small town blocks
from third street east, an iron
engine coupled ferociously
with box cars; the metallic wailing,
its dark rails off east off west,
off places i was not allowed to go
as he always did, father left early
morning, disappearing around
our green garage, returning later
with stick matches, tobacco
breath; stories of Nam, house fires,
Richard Nixon, and the one picture
of his father in his back wallet pocket
years later, after mother left me
her books, her Perry Como LP’s,
her Caldwell novels; years
after she buried herself in her yellow
wicker sewing basket, carefully threaded
and locked into her cold, mausoleum niche
i stood before her marble door
as winter tried to explain itself:
white dry god flakes heaped
on stained glass sills, child licked
from small red mittens; nearby
water frozen in a gray metal pail
it has been years
since she has held me,
years since she has practiced living;
the entire scene perspective,
the vanishing point of delivery
from mother’s past,
the converging
lines of my future
Tim J Brennan has taught secondary English to sophomores and seniors since 1983. His short plays have been produced in MN, TX, NY, IL, and CA. He was a 2002 finalist in the Great American Think-Off essay contest, and his poetry is regionally published, most recently by Rural America Art Center (The Green Blade) in conjunction with the John Hassler Theater in Plainview. He is married to Jaci and has two sons, Alex and Max (the handsome guy in orange).