Skip to main content

The Awning

A being capable of anything:

long drives without bathroom breaks,

driving around me on the basketball court,


asking for the Phillips head, flathead, crescent wrench, socket set

as I stumbled through the basic fixes,

unable to summon the patience

to read directions, pay attention,

to think before I acted.


Now, in a year when I actually worked on my car and made it better not worse,

to think that I would be the missing variable

in the equation of his retirement awning.


The obligatory grunt of muscle

as we lifted the beams.

I was the one who climbed up on the ladder,

who held the heavy, yet not unbearable weight above my head

and lifted up and over and down the post,

the crossbeam resting on both sides in position for the washer, bolt, washer, nut.

I was the able body, the patient mind, the driving force.

In the afternoon, I knew he was tired,

wanted to call it quits and disappear into a cold shower,

the leaning rock of recliner,

but I insisted.

Let’s get as much done today as possible.

He plugged away, though watched me work more often than the early morning hours.

And we did as much as we could with the materials at hand.

In a small town, 60 miles from the next bigger town,

we were stuck.

This suited him fine,

and I looked at the mass of wood, crossbeams, canopy pieces, bolts, hoists, nails,

and knew that I was strong.

I was the body that my brain could still

abuse.

And my father, once capable of anything, was old.


July 19, 2006

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peregrinating the Albuquerque Bosque

  The Map. Overview: Starting in the San Juans in Colorado, the Rio Grande "is the twenty-second longest river in the world and the fourth or fifth longest in North America" ( Texas State Historical Society ).  While the river is characterized by the area it flows through, the river from Elephant Butte Dam to the south to Cochiti Dam in the north is called the Middle Rio Grande.  And in the middle of the middle Rio Grande is the roughly 20 plus miles that flows through Albuquerque.  From an airplane, the Rio Grande is a brown ribbon bordered a green ribbon.  That green ribbon is the Bosque .  I've always been fascinated really exploring an area, getting a sort of overview of an area then drilling down to really get it.  It's led to me hiking the Sandias from end to end and then hiking outlying trails multiple times, biking all the trails in the Cedro Peak area because someone put them on a map, trying different routes to get to ...
3 comments
Read more

Peregrinating the Albuquerque Bosque-the Autumnal Equinox edition

Overview:   In June, around the Summer Solstice, my wife, my dog, and I set out to hike the Albuquerque Bosque from end to end over two days .  It was well over a hundred degrees and after starting later than expected we didn't make it as far the first day as we hoped.  But we did make it. Now, three months later, around the Autumnal Equinox, we set out to do it again.  Our route was slightly different and, with the weather being a lot more pleasant, broke the day into a thirteen mile day and a five mile day:  eighteen total miles from Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge to the Alameda Bridge right on the border between Albuquerque and Corrales. The things we wanted to do differently this time were pretty straightforward:  1) don't get lost at the south terminus and get into the bosque sooner, and 2) walk even more on the westside.  So, the route was a follows:  we'd walk on the east side from Valle de Oro to the Rio Bravo Bridge, cro...
3 comments
Read more

A Year of Thursdays in the Bosque.

 Ran into a friend in the Bosque, and we both remarked about how low the rio was, and I jokingly said, "I almost feel like I should take a picture of the river every week to sort of document it." She said, "Yeah.  That'd be interesting." As she continued with her dog walk, I thought, "I should do that."   With rare exceptions, I walk my dog in the bosque every Thursday morning.  And with rare exceptions, I walk the bosque behind the National Hispanic Cultural Center (sometimes parking at the NHCC and sometimes parking at the small pullout lot south off of 2nd Street). My idea is to the take a picture in the same spot every Thursday for a year to get a photographic record of how much the river changes over time.   I understand a lot about this caged and managed river.  Indeed, Reining in the Rio Grande is probably the first sort of scientific, historical, political book on the river I've ever read.  That's not a genre I usually read. ...
1 comment
Read more