This poem is called "The Father of My Country"
and it's from a whole collection of poems called The George
Washington.
"All fathers in Western civilization
must have a military origin.
The ruler, governor, yes, he is, was the general
at one time or other.
And George Washington won the hearts of his country.
The rough military man with awkward, sincere drawing room
manners.
My father, have you ever heard me speak of him?
I seldom do.
But I had a father and he had military origins or my origins
from him are military, militant.
That is I remember him only in uniform, but of the Navy,
30 years of Chief Petty Officer always away from home.
It is rough, hard for me to speak now.
I'm not used to talking about him.
Not used to naming his objects, objects
that never surrounded me.
A woodpecker with fresh bloody crests knocks at my mouth.
Father, for the first time, I say your name,
name rolled in thick Polish parchment scroll,
name of Roman candle drippings when I sit at my table
alone each night.
Name of Naval uniform and name of telegram.
Name of coming home from your aircraft carrier.
Name of shiny shoes.
Name of Hawaiian dolls.
Name of mess spoons, name of greasy machinery
and name of stenciled names.
Is it your blood I carry in a test tube?
My arm, to let fall, crack, and spill
on the sidewalk in front of the men I know, I love, I know?
So you left my house when I was under two,
being replaced by other machinery
and I didn't believe you left me.
This scene, the trunk-yielding treasures
of a green fountain pen, heart-shaped mirror,
amber beads, old letters with brown ink
and the gopher snakes stretched across the palm
tree in the front yard with woody trunk-like monkey
skin and a sunset through the skinny persimmon trees.
You came walking.
Not even a telegram or postcard from Tahiti.
Love, love through my heart like ink in the thickest nubbed pen,
black and flowing into words.
You came to me and I at least six.
Six doilies of lace, six battleship cannon,
six old beer bottles, six thick steaks, six love letters,
six clocks running backwards, six watermelons, and six baby
teeth.
The six cornered hat on six men's heads, six lovers at once
or one lover at sixes and sevens.
How I confuse this with my dream.
Walking the tightrope bridge with gold knots
over the mouth of an anemone, tissue spiral lips,
and holding on so that the ropes burn
as if my wrists had been tied.
If George Washington had not been the father of my country,
it is doubtful that I would ever have found a father.
Father in my mouth, on my lips, in my tongue,
out of all my womanly fire.
Father I have left in my steel filing cabinet
as a name on my birth certificate.
Father I have left in the teeth pulled out of dentist's office
and thrown into their garbage cans.
Father living in my wide cheekbones and short feet.
Father in my Polish tantrums and my American speech.
Father, not a holy name.
Not a name I cherish, but the name I bear.
The name that makes me one of a kind in any phone book,
because you changed it and nobody but us has it.
Father who makes me dream in the dead of night
of the falling cherry blossoms.
Father who makes me know all men will leave me if I love them.
Father who made me a maverick, a writer, a namer.
Name, father, son, father, moon, father, bloody Mars father.
Other children said, my father is a doctor,
or my father gave me this camera,
or my father took me to the movies, or my father
and I went swimming.
But my father is coming in a letter
once a month for a while.
And my father sometimes came in a telegram.
Mostly, my father came to me in speech.
My father, because I dreamed it one night
that I dug through the ash heap in back of the pepper tree
and found a diamond shaped like a dog.
And my father called the dog and it came leaping over to him
and he walked away out of the yard down the road with the dog
jumping and yipping at his heels.
My father was not in the telephone book in my city.
My father was not sleeping with my mother at home.
My father did not care if I studied the piano.
My father did not care what I did.
And I thought my father handsome and I loved him.
And I wondered why he left me alone so much.
So many years in fact.
But my father made me what I am, a lonely woman
without a purpose, Just as I was a lonely child
without any father, I walk with words, words, and names, names.
Father was not one of my words.
Father was not one of my names.
But now I say, George Washington,
you have become my father in his 20th century naval uniform.
George Washington, I need your love.
George, I want to call you father, father,
my father, the father of my country, that is me.
And I say the name to chant it, to sing it,
to lace it around me like weaving cloth,
like a happy child on that shining afternoon in the palm
tree sunset with her mother's trunk yielding treasures.
I cry and cry, father, father, have you really come home."