Halfway North

I retrieve the already-read newspaper for my dad from my car

while we wait for breakfast omelets in the late afternoon,

his eyes patched from melanoma scrapes.

He looks like he got in a fist-fight.

“Thems that die are the lucky ones!” he had said,

coming out of surgery, a pirate. “Arrr, arrr, arrr.”

The jokes are there, locked up in the long-term safe of his brain

along with stories of Vietnam and Agent Orange,

knee replacements and a reconstructed shoulder,

teeth knocked out in semi-pro football, cataract surgery, contracting fingers, thinning hair.

The cast is there from Racine St. Catherine’s,

guys he played semi-pro football with with 1900s immigrant names:

Kazanjan, Poisl, Obernberger, D’Acquisto. Major McManus from Vietnam,

always followed by: “Saved me a stripe!”

But today is another story, he doesn’t remember that he’s just had surgery,

that he shouldn’t wipe his eyes; blood like tears slide down his cheek from the stitches.

My mom, a sainted captain, steers him like a compliant ship

in and out of port, getting him to breakfast, to haircuts,

to doctors’ offices, to weddings, to funerals.

“Ma’am?” I expect the man in the parking lot to ask for money

but he just stands with the door ajar in his rusting truck.

“I watched your mom wipe your dad’s face there just now

in the parking lot, so gently; that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen,

to have someone love you and care for you like that. It was just beautiful.”

Inside, the only waitress is dressed in a tiger suit

and is on the phone answering a survey about margarine.

In the booth, I watch my white haired mom put her arm around my dad

who’s shivering a little on the cold bench,

and she tells him what a good patient he’s been,

his eyes black and blue and teary and stitched up

like he’s just won a prize fight because surely

he has.