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[with 3 poems by Denton Loving]
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Foundation
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Unable to stand in our hillside orchard,
too weak to swing a mattock or to wrestle
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with dirt, my dad wants to plant peach trees.
For him, I tear the earth open.
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Rocks bleed out from the poor mountain soil,
and I unwrap swaddled peach roots.
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Before I scrape the dirt back and tamp it down,
I return the largest rock under the young roots,
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a surrogate for what I fear. I bury it back,
imagine the roots encircling the rock,
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enclosing it, building from its foundation.
Like the hard stone buried in the sweetest fruit.
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Denton Loving
from Tamp, Mercer University Press, © 2023
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Needful things have a way of turning up. A chance word of assurance from a friend at church. An old photo misplaced and rediscovered. A new book.
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I’ve just called Dad to let him know I won’t be visiting tomorrow. Last week’s COVID has relapsed, and even though I caught it from him in the first place I don’t want to risk returning the gift. Maybe my sister can drive down from Asheville and refill his medication trays. Maybe a neighbor can help him pick up the car he will never again drive from the service department. Maybe all the little errands will get done some way or another until I can see him and Mom next week sometime. Something will turn up.
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Indeed. The needful thing that has turned up for me this week is Denton Loving’s new book, Tamp. Denton’s grief at the loss of his father is both gentle and vicious. Both cutting and sweet. Subtle, surprising, pervasive. But it’s how he expresses loss that is needful for me this week. He recalls and describes the many things he had done alongside his father, the toil and the joy. He describes the tasks he must now do without his father. I feel like I’m walking that very path not far behind him.
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I sit down and force myself to reflect. Push aside for a moment the aggravation and exhaustion of caregiving. Who was my father? Who is he now? Who are we together? I don’t want to summarize our years under the same roof with an offhand quip, “He didn’t like my long hair”; he doesn’t even comment on it now. Lately I labor with the frustration of all the capacities he’s lost (but struggles to admit he’s lost). Instead let me paint for myself an image of his presence throughout the twists and turns of all our decades – a steady beacon of approval. Sometimes distant, but never dim.
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Let me be thankful for the engineer, salesman, executive who still covers the dining room table with stacks of lists. Let me acknowledge how tough it must be for him each time he has to hand over another essential task to me – thanks, Dad, for letting me drive you everywhere, keep up with your prescriptions, clean out the recesses of the fridge. Let me set aside my own to-do lists when we’re together, if only for a morning’s cool respite on the patio.
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Let me prepare now, Dad, for the day when I won’t have you to take care of. Or to take care of me. Let me appreciate each day until then.
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❦
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When I first learned of Denton Loving’s book and placed my order, I was curious about the title. I didn’t select which poems to feature today simply because you’ll find that word within them, but you will. As I re-read all the poems, I think I’m discovering that even without tamp explicitly visible within their lines, each one still speaks to the word’s theme. To create something solid and lasting; to be conscientious and never leave something half-done; to pay attention. And neither you nor I ever really tamp the earth in finality and just walk away. We are only continuing our journey, from fence post upright and steady, from headstone and grave, into the next day and the next. An unbroken genealogy of love.
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+++ ❦ ❦ ❦
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If there’s an angel of lost gloves
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my father didn’t believe and didn’t wait
for holy intercession. He mislaid his gloves
faster than his temper. He wasn’t careless,
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though I never knew him to lay hands
on the tool he needed when he needed it.
So he bought pair after pair, suede
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cowhide fit to stretch barbed wire. Still,
he usually worked with only one hand
sheathed and sometimes then
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with the fingers blown out, each digit
ruptured by the snag of steel points
reaching next to rip open skin.
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Now, I find his leather fingers cupping air
like wren nests, lingering in buckets,
on shed shelves, on the aged oak floor
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of the barn loft, in the midst of a task,
maybe a pair of nails within reach
as if he’ll return when he finds his hammer.
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Denton Loving
from Tamp, Mercer University Press, © 2023
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❦ ❦ ❦
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The Fence Builder
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My graves don’t rise or sink
the grave digger says after I show him
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the place to bury my father.
I take in the view as if this valley
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is what he’ll see for eternity.
Down the hill, children play
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outside the elementary school.
Sheep pasture around the cemetery.
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Some people just push their pile of dirt back in.
But I tamp the dirt at every level.
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I’d never wondered why some graves swell
and some settle and sag
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but the grave digger’s words stay with me.
He taps the clay above my sleeping dad,
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leveling the damp ground
just as the man in the casket
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taught me to tamp around wooden posts
to make a new fence last,
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packing the dirt and rocks
so wire is pulled taut, forced to hold tight
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for at least a generation,
those rhythmic strikes a refrain
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for all those who take pride in a task well done,
those men who work the earth –
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the fence builder erecting his monuments,
the grave digger and all he lays to rest.
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Denton Loving
from Tamp, Mercer University Press, © 2023
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❦ ❦ ❦
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❦ ❦ ❦
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V E R S E ❦ I M A G E 