Eric Darby
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Eric Darby is a writer and poet whose work has appeared in literary magazines (including Detroit's "The Furnace"), fiction websites (including Boston's Swankwriting.com) and two nationally-distributed spoken word anthologies. He has also been the featured performer at poetry slams and storyteller's nights around the country. Originally from Maine, he now lives in Roxbury, Massachusetts with three non-writing roommates and a friendly dog named after a stout.
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my father's hands
As a child,
I would sit in my father's lap
and just marvel at his hands:
nails blood-blackened
by mis-swung hammers,
one fingertip mangled
by a lawnmower blade,
but devout even in pain,
I never heard him swear.
He always earned his living-
our living- with his hands,
skin absorbing the hazards
of each occupation,
scars and bumps telling stories
of homes built, fishing boats repaired;
he inscribed a whole history of second-hand cars
across those skun knuckles.
I always admired how tough he was,
how he never cried
no matter how much it hurt,
how he once removed twelve stitches
at the breakfast table
with a jack-knife and pliers,
just to save us a doctor's bill.
So I set out to inherit these traditions-
bicycle accidents,
skin left on apple tree trunks,
my own rows of calluses
earned in the summer blueberry fields,
but years and miles,
textbooks and college degrees,
warm offices and business lunches
become my life,
and I have lost my father's hands,
ceased building that maze
of stories and lessons
upon my palms.
My father says he's proud of me, my
business cards, my
khaki button-down "work" clothes,
even says he's proud of my lower back
that doesn't stiffen each morning,
but I still envy his hands:
their roughness, their evidence
of a true labor and crafts
that mine now lack.
At home for Christmas,
I always sleep in,
drink coffee by the fireplace,
look up as he stamps through the door,
brushing the icicles from his beard.
Would I get him a bandaid,
so he doesn't have to shed
three layers of wet clothes?
No, he didn't cut himself,
it's just so cold out
that they crack like this sometimes.
Patched up, he asks-
almost apologetically-
for help with the firewood:
his back is bothering him
even more these days.
So I finish my coffee and go upstairs
to begin changing into the
real work clothes
that I keep at home,
but I dress slowly, dreading the
sharp bite of the wind, and the
tiring swing of the axe that awaits…
until I look outside to see my father, alone,
struggling through the snowdrifts without me,
and I am so disappointed in myself-
disappointed that I've gotten soft
and unaccustomed to real labor;
disgusted that I've become a white-collar tourist
in my own working-class homeland.
So before I step out
into that cold Maine winter,
I'm always careful
to slide gloves over these city hands,
careful to hide their new identity,
so that when I lay my hands to work
beside my fathers',
he will not notice
our difference.
This poem originally appeared in the 2002 NPS Anthology Freedom to Speak
