“Father’s Garage”

For Father’s Day, I offer one of my recent poems with an appropriate focus, “Father’s Garage,” which appeared in the Spring 2010 issue of Tidal Basin Review.

In addition, since this weekend coincides with the U.S. Open Golf Championship, scheduled every year for the final round to fall on Father’s Day, watching the event once again evokes pleasant memories of those many fine times shared with my father on a golf course.

Indeed, in a previous post from April of 2008 at One Poet’s Notes—titled “Golfing with My Father” after a poem by W.D. Ehrhart that appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review and is reprinted in the article—I have written in prose about assorted impressions of my father that are tied to the sport, and I recommend readers revisit that commentary as well.

FATHER’S GARAGE

Another still winter night and stars
. . . . . glitter again, shining over the far dark

fields, sparkling like the tapered
. . . . . rows of thin drill bits or those heaps

of nuts and bolts I remember seeing
. . . . . scattered across a tabletop under dull

shop lights in my father’s garage,
. . . . . that graying wood-framed structure

behind our house he had converted
. . . . . one summer Sunday into a carpenter’s

workroom. In a corner of that dimly
. . . . . lit space, he would spend long hours

each weekend, sometimes fitting
. . . . . together the finely-sanded pine slats,

fashioning drawers, planing molding
. . . . . until smooth, staining cabinet doors,

varnishing shelves, always repairing
. . . . . several pieces of furniture at a time

for many of our neighbors who knew
. . . . . to listen for the music of his jigsaw.


—Edward Byrne