The Grasshopper
They say my daddy was a grasshopper,
living for the day
not giving two shakes
for tomorrow.
Daddy sure did mention tomorrow a lot.
“Lend me a dollar, Li’l Gal, I’ll pay
you back tomorrow.”
“Gimme five bucks, Son, you know
I’ll give it back tomorrow.”
Tomorrow never came.
Daddy, a grasshopper,
played into the fall,
till winter overtook him.
Wings broken, lungs filled
with the cold air of cancer
he froze, holed up in a VA hospital in Temple.
Comatose, they said.
His jaundiced skin pulled tight
across swollen cheeks,
his Cherokee pride stretched out of whack
while heavy lids slammed shut
over alcohol eyes;
rheumy, slate-blue eyes,
once sharp as the bone-handled
hunting knife he carried.
I was fifteen, but he thought I was five
and called me by my sister’s name
as I stood by his bedside
trying to read his sluggish lips
under the oxygen tent.
And I forgot the dollars
and the bucks, and tomorrow.
I remembered what he could not:
that he danced a Texas two-step
with me when I was three;
and proudly watched me dive
from limestone bluffs and
swim to him in deep water.
That he laughed a lot
when I was small,
and swore more often than not
when I was older.
I remembered his drunken artist hand
fumbling on used canvas
trying to paint the dull red pain
out of his life.
My daddy was a simple man
with simple needs:
his drink, his art, his children,
my mother.
All but the last were his to keep.
I left him there,
in the oxygen tent
and yesterday,
and I went on to tomorrow
to find a way to pay myself back
out of the trust of memories
my daddy funded.