My Father

My father was a quiet man, never the center of attention or the leader of the conversation. In fact, I had despaired long ago of learning much from him. As I said, he was a quiet man, a man happy enough with a beer or two watching a baseball game, any baseball game. When he was a teenager, he was somewhat of a local baseball hero in Flatbush, Brooklyn. When I was a child in Brooklyn, he used to take me to Ebbets Field to watch the Brooklyn Dodgers play. I remember those games well. The grass was real and always green. The smell of boiling hot dogs and sauerkraut filled the air. So did the warm dull slap of the ball hitting the pocket of the worn leather gloves, the crack of a wooden bat, and the cheers of the crowd when Da Bums scored a run. I loved going with him to experience the sights, sounds and smells of a summer's day in Brooklyn. But, as I had little love for the game itself, we soon parted company on this, the only activity we participated in together.

It's funny. He's been dead for ten years now, and the man I thought I didn't know seems more familiar to me now than he ever did in life. Whenever I am faced with any situation, I can hear his words of wisdom which seemed to escape my short term memory, but are vivid and clear now in my long term memories. Like the well-worn story of the young man who thought his parents knew nothing, only to find out that they got wiser as he got older, I missed my father's wisdom when I was young. But I don't miss it now. I just miss him. And so, this poem is a tribute to him and to his, and my, continued memory of him.



The Patron Saint of Saturdays
Christopher Bogart

He always got up at the crack of dawn,
To sneak out to the kitchen
In the back of our Quonset hut,
To make my breakfast.

It was there that I would find him,
Every Saturday morning,
Standing before the kitchen sink,
The sun streaming through the windows,
Infusing the whiteness
Of his tee shirt and sailor’s pants
With pure bright light.

The sunlight that streamed through the window’s yellow valance,
Gave his head a halo of gold.
He was the bold silent sailor of World War II,
Of sea battles fought off the Normandy coast,
My father,
The patron saint of Saturdays.


Our Saturdays were always banana Saturdays.
My father would take the Bakelite knife in hand,
And slowly cut rounds from their fingerlike forms
Into my white porcelain bowl.


I sat on a chipped painted wooden chair
In front of the yellow stained oilcloth,
My arms folded
In mute anticipation,
Awaiting the sprinkle of sparkling grain sugar,
Waiting for the milk to pour
Over these pale golden rounds of soft sweetness,
Just begging for the touch of the spoon.


My dad’s broad white cotton tee-shirted back
Clothed in the pure light of each new sun’s rising,
Enveloped each of these special Saturday breakfasts
In a feeling of safety,
Free from care.


And as I slowly emptied
The contents of the white porcelain bowl,
He sat across the stained oilcloth,
His arms folded
And stared,
Uniquely aware
Of the frailty of four.