Street roots., December 28, 2018, Page 13, Image 13

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Street Poetry
Page 14
Street Roots • Dec. 28, 2018-Jan 3, 2019
My Father
My Farewell Note to 2018
by Brian Lane Jr.
by Mary Daniels
Fuck off 2018 and I don’t really know what to expect of 2019,1 just hope that I make it
through sober.
I’m probably over-pessimistic, but if I’ve learned anything from this brain injury I’ve learned
that I focus too much on the negative. So the one thing that I am proud of is the fact that
I’ve started to develop a real relationship with my mother, or at least one that is not centered
on drugs, and for that I’m proud. I lost my grandmother, but I’m sure that she understands
why I had to come here.
Now the things I look forward to in no particular order: staying sober, getting the help that I
need particularly the physiological and emotional counseling that I know that I need so that I
can figure out how exactly I’m going to live the rest of my life with the brain injury. I
wouldn’t mind finding some kind of employment, because being unemployed and living on a
fixed income is a challenge. And maybe a dog. Other than that my biggest obstacle is figuring
out how to be sociable and not isolating myself, but it’s like lost luggage at an airport that no
one is claiming and it’s just sitting there. The only difference is it’s my life, and I can either
step up to the counter and claim it, or else I can sit there and deal with it because it is not
going anywhere.
Also maybe getting stable housing would be nice.
My father was the light of my early childhood
before life changed him.
He never spoke to me of art
(what does a kid know from art?)
But he called me his Beautiful Darling Betsy
in a tone that said for him was true
and he taught me how to write my name
light-years before I went to school.
Later he told me A’s were special;
that the best A’s were for original thoughts.
This was my motivation behind every A I got.
On payday he always bought us treats
Five chocolate kisses in a cardboard tray
Or special, crispy Slim Jim pretzels
That only one store in Philly sold.
Home from work, he’d sweep me up
for a big Hello, and safe in his arms
I could touch the ceiling, then see the floor
a thousand miles below,
where my sister, impatient to burst
waited her turn - the only time she was never First.
My father was a giant to me.
My father loved history and told me tales
Of Pompeii buried under Vesuvius’s ash
and the Roman Legion disappearing on a quick march into
Britannia’s mists
Two thousand years ago, mind you,
But so real when he told me, and alive and true
about people who walked this same earth as I do
My degree is in Art History.
My father loved books and valued all knowledge
and had an enormous sense of fun
My father was the light of my early childhood
before life claimed him, drained him, changed him
and dimmed forever the light of his sun.
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