Author’s note: My grandfather passed just before my daughter’s birth in late October 2009. His birthday is November 6th, 1925. I think of him often.

dogwood
(for vernon wesley gause, sr.)

i think of you under dogwood trees
hands gnarled and twisted never relenting
whisky cupped in your hand seventies aftershave
musked on my small head careful to always
hold an arm out to ward off
whatever phantoms you thought might
try to take me.

this was earlier
before i learned your faults
i remember huddling in
deer stands as dusk fell
as whipporwills celebrated
the descent of the sun;
i was alone, waiting for you, for the
hum of the atv you curled
around ruts in fairfield, south carolina:
i feared you not returning.

it was november, i remember
the call unfurled
it’s time to come home he
isn’t able to breathe any longer
unassisted
and i couldn’t leave
my own golden child awaiting to be born
you waiting and holding on
your own neurons like mine frozen
the grip of the disease on you
i waited for a plane
whose contrails wouldn’t arrive;
i wasn’t that strong.

six years later, she is golden everything
you might have wanted to see; six weeks before
her birth you were gone
and i have
only been to your gravestone
once
but i left the small heart of a dogwood
petal there once
i have traversed sandy dunes in oregon
stumbled through love and loss myself
fucked over the neurons in
my brain
poured whisky over my
past and started again
and i wanted to tell you
thank you
and i haven’t forgotten a moment
and that the ruts you carried me in
muddied then carved into
the clay of our hearts
are still with me
with us.