Dahlia, and Wisdom, and My Father

Abstract

Dahlia, and Wisdom, and My Father Kathy Fagan (bio) Dahlia When sometimes my deadones visit me in dreams, I hearbut do not see them,like the parakeet repeatingits name each morning beneaththe floral cover of its cagein the warbled Rs ofmy grandmother's brogue.My therapist says I learnedto take comfort in languagefrom an early age. Conversely,I may have been sensitizedto verbal rather than visualcues. Mostly my dead vocalizemy name, or pieces of it,as if I were meant tobuild from its syllables someonewho is without them nowand will someday no longer bein need of a name. Prettybird, Pretty bird. A Novemberdahlia auto-filling the horizonwith its petals at sunrise. [End Page 193] Wisdom How often can you passa photo of your familythinking,These faces look familiar,and not find yourselfridiculous. I sized the priceyhandmade paper I'd beensaving, the onewith gold detail, to matthe picture, too old to fitanything store- bought; my motherbarely a teenager,her mother maybethirty-five. I'd guessthey're in the Catskills,a vacation favorite in the '40swith the Irish, a jokein the '80s,desirable again today.For oncethey look not-angry: Nana proud,Mom her belovedand loving child.In this they are and are notthemselves,as I was [End Page 194] when they lived,believing myself,as children will,the focus of their everythought.They fought so long and hardabove meI half-expected Solomonto wisely intervene;if he ordered me split, they'd haveto quit.Not a singlephoto of the three of us exists. [End Page 195] My Father raked leaves into stacks much taller than Iand let me leap into every onelike bursting the suninto pieces: the scrape of his rake,the way leaves cushioned and cut,their old book smell. A word can't gildthe spangle of his ungloved hand,either my laugh or his,more than it already was—it waswhat we understood of lovethat brought me up in the tumult. [End Page 196] Kathy Fagan Kathy Fagan's fifth book is Sycamore (Milkweed Editions, 2017), a finalist for the 2018 Kingsley Tufts and William Carlos Williams poetry awards. Recent work appears in the New York Times, the Nation, Poetry, and Tin House. She has received fellowships from the NEA and Ohio Arts Council. Fagan directs the MFA Program at Ohio State, where she also serves as series co-editor for the OSU Press/Wheeler Poetry Prize. Copyright © 2019 Middlebury College Publications