Free Lunch--Poem, Len Roberts, "My Father's Forecast"

The chunk of oak snapped in the black stove
as I sat with my father's face
in my hands, his
nights of cigarettes rising with each breath
until he ran out of the rowhouse for
more. He was grim-lipped,
as though he knew he was coming
to this, behind
thin glass, completely still at last,
no more Guam or Guadalcanal, no more
mad woman in a blue nightgown
threatening him with a butcher knife
as he tried to drink
his third bottle of beer each night.

In the picture he was younger than I was,
his voice higher, almost
a whine, when he spoke: Son, you’ve
gone wrong, look
at you, misshapened back, that awful
cough, prostate
infection, kidney infection, indigestion,
it all comes from a sour heart, I know,
didn't I stay up those nights rocking
until the linoleum wore out in two long ruts
and the cold hour came with its black
wings to carry me off? And
when you wake, don't mistake
the maple's branches clattering at your window
for my voice,
this is me, not the hard east wind
telling you what to do, and to do it soon,
for there's colder weather coming tomorrow,
and huge drifts of snow.