Right Guard

As he aged, my father dwindled,
not in stature—though he grew smaller,
as elders must—but rather in estate.
He never required much,

insisted on giving things away.
What am I going to do with all this?
Suddenly I had his shirt,
wristwatch, hammer, and plane—

his car keys and driver’s license
when the time came. I arrived
hours after his death
and stole a moment alone in his room

at The Pines, a name too green
and pulsing, too filled with trees—
near infuriating—for a tomb.
My mother had died a year earlier.

To save money to pass along to me
and my sister, my father had requested
a move to an efficiency—a monk’s cell.
At heart he was an ascetic.

I sat on the edge of his small bed,
where he’d perched that morning—
September 3,
his fifty-ninth wedding anniversary—

to quell his vertigo,
hands folded, his dawn office
before launching his day.
He witnessed the first rind

of Sabbath sun cross the sash.
Song sparrows chanted “Asperges Me.”
Then, prepared, he rose.
I stood and followed his shade,

gauging where in the modest span
between his bedclothes and coffeepot
he’d decided to join my mother—
privately, no announcement, no illness,

no deathwatch. No priest.
The attention would have embarrassed him.
His only flourish was the white pressed
handkerchief on him at all times.

Perhaps he glimpsed his fetch,
or, responsive to my mother’s whims,
her beckoning;
or his own mother, whom he’d lost

at five to childbirth.
Given neither to signs nor bodement,
never mysterious, but like us all
that parse life step by step,

my father kept a secret life
he alone entered—nothing terrible,
or even curious—a silent chamber
he had the wisdom, the courage,

to leave locked, the key hidden,
though he had little use for metaphor.
A millwright, a steel man,
he discovered the ladled heat

and molten pour, the union shop,
a practice he abided by and died for.
What was left of his to take?
He’d already given me everything.

I wandered into his tiny bathroom.
Stationed on the shelf above the sink
stood a can of Right Guard
Original (of course) Sport,

the only deodorant my dad used:
the logo’s stick figure in full throttle,
bolting from the blocks.
I grabbed it and pressed the actuator.

The valve hissed and hung a familiar
incensed mist. Out of it,
like a genie summoned from its lamp,
appeared my father.