by Steve Gaines
the beginning…
was my first adventure
gone fishing with a home made pole
and a bent pin hook…
in the spring of nineteen thirty-nine
for the first time out on my own
far far away from home…
in the back yard by the little stream
running its way toward tomorrow…..
by Steve Gaines
by the time she began to live in my brain
the words she would say were drilled into me
and the hold she had on me was well defined
by the hours we had spent wrestling on the floor
rehearsing the fire we would we burn in
by Steve Gaines
beginning today
the final year of labors…
in three hundred and sixty-five days of tomorrows
I will not come to work
by Steve Gaines
the morning my Grandfather died
he was painting picnic tables
making his way slowly down a long line of them
aluminum colored and pealing in the sun
badly wearing their too many years
he was bringing them back to a shining new life
and he was quietly dying on his way
one foot in front of the next
one breath on top of the last
slower and slower
by Steve Gaines
my grandfather is both real to me
and a ghost I never knew
an old man
and the young 19th century “adventurer”
he used to tell me about
over cups of black coffee and camel cigarettes
he had to sneak out to smoke
there was a picture
that told the story…
the young footless nomad
with his cornet and the look of leaving again…
the picture sings still in my own sixty year old memory:
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