{"id":7242,"date":"2021-02-17T22:08:29","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T22:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/?p=7242"},"modified":"2021-03-02T21:30:41","modified_gmt":"2021-03-02T21:30:41","slug":"father-hunger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/?p=7242","title":{"rendered":"FATHER HUNGER"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We enjoyed a highly romantic Valentine\u2019s Day. Snowed in, my beloved kindly brought dinner; homemade butter chicken, aloo ghobi and rice. It\u2019s a blessing, spending time with a fellow foodie\/sensualist.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reading Eavan Boland\u2019s\u00a0 inspirational\u00a0Journey With Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet,<\/em> thinking about my relationship to my father. Or, fathers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he, the supremely important and attended-to presence.\u201d Despite all their conflicts my mother treated my father that way, always providing the lion\u2019s share. In return he belittled her. And largely ignored his daughters, until angered. \u201cStanding over their statements, their promises. Looking up at them every morning, I felt like what I was, what I would always be: a daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

That resonates. I still feel that way, all these years later. Hence the following poems. Dear old Dad\u2019s been on my mind lately. Haunting me. Father hunger? So many of us are afflicted. I\u2019ve worked hard to accept that I will never win his approval.\u00a0\u00a0C\u2019est la vie.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SUMMIT<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our ruthlessly peculiar family
\nreached its zenith
\nby conquering ten years
\nof inertia, indecision and delays
\nto leave the sun struck flatlands
\nwith ninety-three bucks
\nand several shreds of dignity.<\/p>\n

A mountaineer cannot be confined
\nto the wide-open prairie,
\nhe must ascend
\nthose fabled Goliaths,
\nmade to see over
\nbut dammit his daughters
\nmust see them,
\nnay, live in them,
\nfor them, as he did.<\/p>\n

A day later the Rockies
\nemerged from the horizon
\nshrouded in their immortal grandeur.
\nHours later, in a squall
\nand far from our coastal destination,
\nthe loaded down station wagon
\nbroke down at the top of Rogers Pass.<\/p>\n

Dad steadily made his way
\nthrough a maw
\nof flying snow and frozen scree
\nto the nearest settlement.
\nWe, snivelling, huddled
\nour skinny girl bodies together
\nin a nest of blankets and parkas,
\nblissfully unaware of the lives
\nmountains take via avalanches,
\nfern concealed crevasses, hypothermia.<\/p>\n

His landing in a bantam mining town
\nprovided a foothold of two years,
\nworking to pay off the motel bill,
\nsquirrel away savings for the final lag
\nof our journey to Vancouver,
\nits peaks and a new chapter of peril.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MY FATHER\u2019S CHURCH<\/strong><\/p>\n

The four of us hiked together
\nnearly every Sunday
\nregardless of season
\nthough we didn\u2019t call it hiking,
\nwe called it going for a drive<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A drive could involve fishing,
\nprospecting, duck hunting,
\nhuckleberry or hazelnut picking,
\na frozen pond. Lungs shivering,
\nice-skates anchored my flighty mind,
\nmy sisters\u2019 willowy limbs.<\/p>\n

A drive could involve cutting
\ndown a hemlock for firewood,
\nnear misses with black bears and logging trucks.
\nTo our delight, Dad would carve whistles
\nout of mountain ash then wince at the racket,
\nmuch the way he cringed
\nwhenever I pointed to shiny pebbles<\/p>\n

and shouted, \u201cGold!\u201d
\n\u201cFool\u2019s gold.\u201d \u201cThey\u2019re still pretty.\u201d
\nOnce I found porcupine quills on the forest floor,
\nfoolishly jabbing them into my thigh
\ninstead of placing them in my pocket.
\nAs determined as I was to pull them out
\nby myself I could not, astonished to discover
\nthat those buggers truly are barbed!<\/p>\n

Embarrassed and dreading his contempt
\nI said nothing the entire ride home
\nwhere I was forced to announce
\nthe unbearable pain with a yelp,
\noffending needles
\npromptly removed with pliers.
\nI don\u2019t recall anger.
\nMy father was at peace
\nin the woods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We enjoyed a highly romantic Valentine\u2019s Day. Snowed in, my beloved kindly brought dinner; homemade butter chicken, aloo ghobi and rice. It\u2019s a blessing, spending time with a fellow foodie\/sensualist. I\u2019m reading Eavan Boland\u2019s\u00a0 inspirational\u00a0Journey With Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet, thinking about my relationship to my father. Or, fathers. \u201cAnd he, the supremely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,12],"tags":[217,236],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7242"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7242"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7286,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7242\/revisions\/7286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}