by Chris Byrd
I had alienated DS Poorman
for the first time years before
Mistook his kind heart
One, two, three…
too many times to count, really
He cautiously let me back in after nearly two decades
I alienated DS Poorman
for the second time a very short time later
Misread his complexity
for the last time
This time through a selfish lens
This time an invasion of private space
The last time I ever heard DS Poorman’s voice
It was hurled directly at my head:
“If you ever contact me again, I will call the police”
Four months later
I woke up in a flop of 3am sweat
On my recently deceased father’s
New couch
I didn’t startle
Just sort of opened my eyes
Left face pressed
against whatever expensive material
I was ruining
It is a pattern in my life
I had been cleaning out this house
for almost 4 days
Papers, letters, drawers, cabinets, closets
the usual
Not much spectacular
One locked file cabinet
in my father’s garage
was all that was left
No sleep was waiting for me
So why not now?
I walked to the garage
Flipping lights on through the house
as I went
The cabinet sat alone in a corner
With a key not well hidden
Blue painter’s taped to the right side
Pushed flush against the wall
It felt like pulling a band-aid
When it finally released
With mixed feelings I unlocked the cabinet
Pulling open the drawers one by one
Looking down with expectation
First drawer empty
Second drawer empty
Third drawer
Would hold all that was left unpacked
of my father’s life.
If Empty I was done
But
there was a box
with a key
Scotch taped to the right side of the box
pressed flush against the back of the drawer
I turned the key
Inside my father had locked away
a dozen high school poems
by David Baker.
My father was one of DS Poorman’s high school English teachers
And while I knew in High School
I was going to be America’s next great poet
(my mother told me so)
I guess my father thought that distinction
Would better suit Dave.
At sunrise
I loaded my recently deceased father’s
Brand new Explorer with as much as would fit
Pointed North
I headed back to Louisville.
The poems rode shotgun.
I wrote a note
Telling DS Poorman that my father had died
and how he had protected these high school poems by David Baker
locked in the bottom of an otherwise empty file cabinet.
I took the note and with the key
Blue Painters taped them to the top of box
I drove to where I knew DS Poorman lived and
sat it on the front porch
I was reaching out one last time
Asking forgiveness from his complex heart
And his kind spirit
I didn’t know how Dave would react
He never called to let me know what he thought
I never had a sense of Dave’s grasp on the past
Or if those poems even mattered to him any longer
But I will always hold onto this:
The Police
never showed up at my house
Chris Byrd is a poet and housing development coordinator for LDG.