My father liked to paint things gold:
the antique clock, its swinging pendulum,
a last designed for an Italian foot,
the blunt-nosed anvil, birthday gift to me.
His picture frames compete with gilded streams,
dazzling lanterns rival paler flames,
and cowbells' muted clappers free their wards.
There's nothing gilt can't solve.
(Once I saved my father's life --
with one quick press unstuck the bone
that threatened breath. No one said a word.
We sat back down. Potatoes, beans, and fish.)
His passion was for plurals:
seven sewing machines, thirteen violins,
twenty hardwood chairs, sentries
at the basement steps, doors to his domain.
His interests rose in increments,
things he'd found on curbs
or trades he'd made to make things his
then overhauled -- oiled, glued, and braced,
or stripped and stained, varnished slick as talk:
four accordions, keys to any door,
ninety rifles, air horns, telephones in Bakelite, oak -
bullwhips, barrels, bootjacks, crocks,
fifteen potbelly stoves, zithers, rockers,
wicker trunks from Germany.
He's unstrung five pianos, numbered keys
as neat as headstones on the basement floor.
Collapsed across the sander's double belts
(he never dealt in glass), I found my father
blue, cold. The medics came.
It stopped my breath. Needle, shock, and pill.
Now my father's quit his brushes,
scrapers, spangled paint, he argues
with the clock, its swinging pendulum,
the anvil he can't lift (he gave it once to me).
He's left his mark on everything
time filtered through his hands. He's left
it all to me, his eldest daughter,
the next in line: anvil, clock, and last.
