My Dad is 84 years old. More and more he wants to pass on his stories. And I want to hear them. To process them and to savor them, I write them into poems.

Small Town Hall

The townhall of Sharon

is a stone’s throw away

from my father’s heart.

Which makes it part of me

Around the corner and

up the road

was the one-room schoolhouse,

which stands as it always did

reminding dad of the game

throw the ball over the roof.

My father loved his chore

fetching water

from the neighbor next door.

Within that tract of

my father’s core

three farms entwine

One was his grandparents,

One was the renters,

One where his siblings played shadow tag

while he milked the cows

and his own children chased calves

A creek ran behind our farm

dad once followed his sister

to capture frogs.

Near that creek was a group of trees

the memory my dad wants to impart

on his children, is my grandpa, pheasant hunting-

birds flying from the trees so numerous

he could not figure out which one to shoot.

In many ways, those farms are gone

yet what tranquility

it gives my dad and me

to let our minds tramp past the white barn,

over the gnarled barb-wire fence

tangled with weeds.

Beckoned by the trickle of the creek,

we stand with my grandpa,

in his brown vest, red-plaid hat.

Like my dad,

my plan is to get a lot older.

Yet someday, I hope to

stand shoulder to shoulder

with all that love that land.