A Memory and reflection for Father’s Day 2019
(This poem originally appeared in North Georgia Living Magazine)
Fire on Water
by
Joseph Kitchens
My father was many things: son of a family down on its luck because of the Depression, self-taught engineer and artist. He was courageous, reckless and fiercely ambitious. He was also handsome enough to entice Miss Burke County of 1938 to marry him. He was at times a careless father.
His idols were the engineers
of dams and skyscrapers
and, engineer he was,
self-taught, he looked the part:
John Wayne in boots and army khaki pants,
tweed coat and fedora in cold weather,
shirt with flap pockets for his cigarettes.
Some days when disappointment covered him,
he drank too much and he took me fishing,
sometimes far off in the salt marshes and bays
where red fish congregated
over oyster beds at high tide.
When they were biting it was arm-numbing fun,
reeling them into the old rented wooden boat
with its hand-crank gas engine.
On a September Saturday outing
a storm came on fast across the marshes
and fishermen hurriedly retrieved their lines
and stowed their rods to leave. We did too.
A hard pull on the rope failed to crank the engine.
Dad tossed his cigarette and checked the gas.
Empty. He grabbed the gas can
And, with an unsteady deliberateness,
He filled the tank, spilling enough to top off the bay.
The gas cap back on, he coiled and pulled the starter line.
the engine sprang to life without a hitch.
Pleased with himself, he lit a cigarette in celebration
and tossed the match into the oily film that surrounded the boat.
Nearby fisherman stopped their escape preparations
and watched as four-foot flames blazed around our boat.
Standing at the stern seat, Dad grabbed the tiller,
disdainful (or maybe mindful) of his audience,
and with easy grace,
like Washington crossing the Delaware,
he powered the leaky boat through the inferno
while I sat paralyzed in the bow.
Not even Moses had parted a sea on fire.
Dad said little on the way home-
Except “Do not tell your mother.
It would only make her worry when we go fishing.”
Concealment, he thought, inoculated
Him against all future troubles.