Papa Poet

My first post on this site is appropriately a tribute to my father. He was a good man. I wish I had known him better, man to man, as I am blessed to know my sons.

Hunting

I like to pee outside
like Davy Crocket and Daniel Boone
and my Dad when we went hunting.
I accompanied him once
into the Arizona wilds, he,
with a thirty-aught-six converted
from a rifle he’d used on Tarawa,
me, with a stick, and a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich.
He, with coffee, always coffee.
Me, with a thermos of milk.
I learned that day that hunting
is sitting and waiting and watching
and sleeping for eight-year-olds
roused at four to big adventure.
So it was when I awoke I saw him
peeing like a race horse
from flesh fit for Man O’ War.
Since then I have grown
into a man like my father
drinking coffee and more coffee
ever hunting, ever haunted.