Hear Michael Chitwood read this poem:
(requires the free RealPlayer)
OTHER POEMS
Chitwood's The Day Ending and Beginning in the Afternoon
Duty
and History
My father is polishing his wingtips,
left hand up to the wrist
in his right shoe, right hand
wielding the brush, ush, fluff,
like the flutter of a dove.
There's a whole congregation
inside the green Zenith
on the kitchen counter
where he is polishing his wingtips.
It's the Hubbard Sheet Metal Works'
"Little Country Church," and Ralph Stanley
is singing "On the Wings of a Dove."
My father hums along,
his left hand up to the wrist in the left shoe.
Now the shoes are standing
on the mat of newspaper
my father has spread on the kitchen floor.
They gleam like caskets
on the pictures and headlines of Vietnam.
The Sunday morning light
is living up to its name on their black hides.
It's as though no one is standing at attention
on old news, already forgotten,
already left for something else
like these four doves I notice in the dogwood
just off the porch where I am remembering
those empty shoes, those gleaming empty shoes,
strict in their attitude on top of some sad history.
The proper name is Mourning Dove.
Four of them in the dogwood.
--from Poetry magazine, July 1998
Hear Michael Chitwood read this poem: High Quality or Faster Download
(requires the free RealPlayer)
© Copyright 1999 Endeavors magazine, The University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.