We Call Him Papa
for Frank Leslie "Buster" Redfield
May 14, 1925 - Oct. 31, 2004
we call him Papa
and he could move mountains with his silence
he fathered a family of artists
who knew the value of labor
the efficiency of expression
if it is unclear, rephrase it
if it is unusable, remove it
if it is imperfect, rework it
until it is as much a part of you
as a limb
he never said this
but his life implied it
his stone eyes
edited lies from our speech
before we could speak them
his hands held me tight once
after I sinned
they held me soft
when my father translated himself
into a mythology
I've since ceased believing in
his hands were the tools
with which he spoke through his silence
he carved and crafted rifles
like Stradivarius made violins
and the first recoil
was a symphony
compressed to a split second
he brought wood to life
as though generations of forests grew
to make the right grain
the right feel worthy of his talent
he did not build airplanes,
he built aircraft with the precision of a heart surgeon
knowing a loose screw, one misaligned wire
could transform a craft of beauty
into a coffin
and wife like his into a widow
he made no widows
except one
he crafted art that soared like mechanical angels
and made us feel
how he must have felt with Grandma
even in his absence he scares me
because he was so much more
of what a man should be
than the men I see around me
than the man who fathered me
he was sometimes the machine moving me
he was sometimes the monster under my bed
keeping me from going gently into the night
without fighting the darkness
he was sometimes a giant
stretching hands from horizon to horizon
holding down the sun and moon
and dictating their rising
I am convinced that eastern Montana
is so perfectly flat
in awe of him
we call him Papa
and he could move mountains with his silence
I never heard him say he loved her
not in words
not in a way I could steal
not in a way that the cheap poet in me
could have plagiarized into a stanza
for some mediocre poem unworthy of his memory
I never heard him say he loved her with words
he said it with his eyes
he said it in the stories my mother would tell me
about how he would raise armies and wage wars
just to bring her flowers
he said it with the way he told me
about driving across New York and Pennsylvania every weekend
just to see her for two hours between college classes and curfews
he said he loved her by playing "waltzing matilda" on a harmonica
like he was asking her to dance for the first time,
even after all these years
he said he loved her
by showing us how good man
should love a woman right
we call him Papa
and he could move mountains with his silence
he is the poet
me, his eldest grandson,
I am just his microphone
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