The Fire Tower

The Fire Tower

Seventy feet above mossy ground
a retired fire tower continues to watch
evergreen spires stretching to the horizon.

Ten feet for each year since my father had
become an etched granite stone, as silent
as I remembered the man who rested beneath.

I remember the blue metal box descending, cold as
my heart, feeling only relief from endless yearning for
acceptance, attention, a hint of understanding.

As dusk falls upon our glass box lightly swaying,
my camping companion paints a silver lining:
her aging father hunting for unfamiliar gentleness.

Her words catch me off balance. I stumble
and fall from my safe perch aloft, a waterfall of
forgotten moments crashing to a distant ground.

My father snatching me from drowning,
steadying my first bicycle as I pedaled,
unrolling a huge roll of plastic that became

A long soapy slide on a hot summer day.
My father’s boss offering me my first real job.
My father’s impish shit-eating grin.

Decades of blame, perceived neglect, erodes
in a river of memories and tears. All I can say:
“I never cried at my father’s funeral.”

Picturing my father, barely sixteen, driven
by puberty and his first crush, unaware
a family would be thrust upon him so young.

In a secluded tower, a world from any streetlight,
darkness grows so complete that stars blaze
white in spaces I once thought empty,

I finally see he’d done his best.