Playing father to a teenager is work—unpaid work that deserves holiday overtime. Yes, fathers vaguely recall being teenagers themselves, but their own sons are cryptic echoes at best, ciphers not easily solved, and memory is of little use because each child is so different from that little guy called by way of reference from our own wells of wisdom.
In his conversational confession poem, “Last Night I Drove My Son Home,” Jim Daniels provides insight into the rigors of bonding with 15-year-old sons who have changed mightily since their grade-school days.
Let’s make like Father Sullivan and listen in:
“Last Night I Drove My Son Home”
by Jim Daniels
from his friend’s house, where they were filming
a movie starring my son in a love triangle.
My son, fifteen, has never been in a love right angle,
or even a love straight line, as far as I know.
He stopped talking two years ago—
to me, I mean. I got this secondhand from a street informant
I’ll refer to here by her code name, Little Sister.
A warm night, windows rolled down—my cheap car
requires physical cranking. (Not even a CD player!)
Purchased in 2003 when he was ten and still kissed me goodnight
and may even have held my hand while we watched
old movies. (No cable TV either!) Yesterday
he made me kill a giant bug, and I briefly saw
that ten-year-old again.
Full moon—I could see him looking up at it,
following it as I turned and we lost it to the trees.
September, but moist like August. I ached
for a few soft words between us in that silence.
On a sidewalk near the park a young man sat,
face in hands, a friend standing helpless above him.
I slowed down. What’s that guy doing? I said aloud.
Is he Okay?
I see him too, my son said.
As the friend helped the man
to his feet, I sped on.
My son hummed an old song about the moon
that I didn’t know he knew. My son, the star
of a movie I’ll never see. I just get
these vague coming attractions.
I caught him in a lie or two this week.
Every exchange a house of cards—all it takes
is a deep sigh, and they come tumbling down.
I’d have hummed along with him,
but I didn’t want him to stop.
The poem purposely jumps from the good (snippets of conversation and the humming of a song the son might have sung when young) to the bad (silence, lies, and the constant specter of a sigh razing any exchange to the ground).
The snapshot, a mix of dialogue and first-person point-of-father thought, tries to capture the essence of a stage in life—a stage parents want to solve and preserve, on the one hand, and to see pass quickly and mercifully, on the other.
When it comes to family mythology, time is life’s trickster. Some parents will have it easier, and others will be put through the wringer. It’s random, so any poem about it can be, too, in a calculated kind of way, of course.
Do you have a family confession to make? It can be from the past or the present, but the ordeal, if spoken as truth, will meet sympathetic ears from the Father Confessor.
That’d by your reader, nodding his head behind the dimly-lit screen.
11 thoughts on “Forgive Me, Father, for I Am a Father”
Though I’m SOOOO tired of autobiographical poems about family, this is great, subtle, vivid, emotionally wrenching. Here’s an old poem I wrote about my teen-age son (Ken, I’ll stop posting my own work here if I’m being too presumptuous.)
HOW TO LIVE WITH TEENS
James Wright, that famous poet
nobody reads anymore, wrote
“When I was a boy
I loved my country. . . .
Hell, I ain’t got nothing.
Ah, you bastards,
How I hate you.” He also said
“Mad means something.”
Tell me about it!
Cowboy karaoke enrages my son.
Those punk rockers last night?
He says they’re shit
musicians. I say they’re not
like James Wright. They’d be pissed off
in Paradise. Parents, listen!
If we didn’t talk about music,
we wouldn’t talk at all.
I have no problem with you sharing your poems here. And I guess I’m dated goods because I like James Wright (“that famous poet / nobody reads anymore”), too. Terrific finish, by the way.
like it,
so much.
pissed off in paradise ?
made me laugh out loud
last two lines ?
this is the fifth time i read this poem and still get a lump in the throat.
Kia Christina, mom of two teens
Kia, thanks so much for your kind words about my poem. I think I’ll be reading it in March when I read for RATTLE magazine in Pasadena. Stay in touch. If you have time, check out my new website:
jeffersoncarterverse.com
Kia: It’s a professional-looking website and thus quite the upgrade from this empty room you’re in now.
As for Pasadena, Jefe, call me when you’re ready to rattle in to Boston….
Hello Ken,
A former lover hooked me into GoodReads last week and I have been virtually ; ) trotting around the site like the proverbial candy store kid for hours ever since.
This morning I opened my email to see a Friend Request from you.
I don’t know why. This whole world? ‘Tis New to me!
Nor am I certain how I arrived at this corner, where “Last Night I Drove My Son Home” was hanging out wide open.
But serendipity slammed home.
I am raising twins alone. One girl, one boy. They turn fourteen in February.
I love Mr. Daniel’s poem. Not only is it stunningly well crafted, it did for me that thing all great poems do; saying beautifully something so important you could barely find the words for it all yourself.
So now?
Not only does it look to me like somewhere out there that Ken Craft is a real person and I can click Accept. But I’m even gonna offer a confession of my own to contribute to this conversation.
What follows isn’t a polished piece of verse, by any means, it’s just an exercise from class last fall.
And I’m kinda appalled at my own gall – and yet . . . apropos of The Wringer, here goes:
Paper Towel Roll – Winter Term 2018
kitty snow storm in the making
nurse her pillar spun a loft
counter soft
count her soft
tree-blanched absorbent
floral prints on hospital white
trumpets by bedtime
napkins in the breaking light
spill filled with solutions
origami kites
wipe the snot from their noses
wipe the macaroni from the floor
wipe the tear from my faces
no
daddy doesn’t
live here
anymore
Hi, Kia. Thanks for jumping ship for a quick tour of the island here. Some cool images and creative turns of phrase in that little poem you shared. Paper towel roll as “kitty snow storm in the making,” oh yeah. I’m not a cat guy, but I’ve owned a few over the long years and know what they consider “fun” (or maybe their natural rights). Lines 3 and 4 are cool, too. Love the word play. And the twist at the end. Send it in, send it in!
Hi Ken,
I hope you don’t mind if I ask what probably seem to you to be astoundingly ignorant questions, But this is a whole new world for me and I feel very ill-prepared to travel in it. Typing poetry (as opposed to hand writing), clicking on boxes, logging in, logging out, this weird but compelling public/anonymous sharing of work and opinions, the insider jargon . . .
All of it, so strange!
I’m completely fascinated, but So lost!
Please explain if you have time?
What is a “Blog?”
Always sounds like an overfed pet toad. But I’m pretty sure that is not what people mean when they say proudly, “I keep a Blog.”
And what is the difference between Keeping a Blog and Having A Website?
Again, I believe Setting Up A Web Site is not arranging some sort of dusty corner for use by cyber spiders? Or is it? I mean, this you say Jeff’s verse website (I will go look. That much I got figured out) is Real “Professional Looking”. But this setup here (which is a Site-Spot? or a Blog-Bog?) looks very elegant and full to me!
Also, what on earth do people mean by “Chap Book?”
A fashion pamphlet for cowboys?!?
And lastly, you prompted this one, and thus the outpouring of bewilderment:
What does it mean when people say “Send It In!” or “Send This Out?”
To where should one be sending what?
Yrs Truly Struggling To Meet the 21st Century Before It’s Over,
Kia Christina
A blog is a soapbox where you can write whatever you want. Many sites, like this WordPress one, offer free blog plans with upgrades for a price. I pass on the price and operate within the parameters of this good-enough-for-me free version. It’s a time suck on the one hand (bad), but on the other hand it makes me write and think about others’ poetry, which can only improve my own (good).
Blogs are a bit “yesterday” on the Internet because everyone’s doing it now, so the cool crowd has moved on to trendier things. My English major training, therefore, tells me to label it a “website” rather than a mere “blog.” I shop at Euphemisms R Us, in other words.
Jefe’s site is not a blog, it’s a professional “author’s page,” featuring his books and his readings. So it’s a bit different than this.
Chapbooks are short poetry books, usually with poems on a certain theme. If you Google or Duckduckgo “chapbook contests,” you’ll see many ways you can prepare and submit (for a contest entry fee) a small collection of your work.
“Send it in” means market your work. I only started publishing poetry in the past 10 years, and I’m no youngster. You can Google or Duckduckgo “poetry markets” to see where you can submit usually up to 3 to 5 poems. When you’re on the site of a poetry publishing journal or e-zine, you click on SUBMISSION GUIDELINES or WRITERS’ GUIDELINES.
A lot of them go through SUBMITTABLE where you set up an account for free and they track your submissions. Many of these journals now charge a $3 reading fee, but you can easily avoid them and submit stuff for free by purposely selecting markets without reading fees. Then, if you get accepted and your poetry is published, maybe around six other people will read it and you’ll feel pretty good about yourself.
Hey, it’s a start, and we all start somewhere. Look at me — two books accepted by publishers and a third manuscript being revised for the rounds even as I type! Brave New Poetry World, in other words!
Hope this answers you preguntas, and I’m happy someone out there is more of a Luddite than me (Mr. No Cellphone).
Cheers…. KC
Thank you so much!!
I appreciate the sense of humor even more than the information.
Congratulations on being published and feeling good about yourself; not necessarily in that order,
Yup.
I do have a cell phone. ‘Cause I got twin thirteen year-olds running loose in Manhattan.
But if it wasn’t the ultimate ox-y-moron, you could probably call me Queen of the Luddites.
(Would be better than Auntie De Luvian or Stupid Cow, I guess. . . )
Hale, Fellow Well-Met!
Kia Christina
Good luck with your writing and marketing. You can start here once you’re ready to send a few:
https://www.pw.org/literary_magazines?field_genres_value=Poetry&taxonomy_vocabulary_20_tid=All&simsubs=All&items_per_page=25