Thirty Years Later

I deal in drafts and draughts,
I like anyone with a military history
(those must have been the best days of my life,
I haven’t stopped

saying so). My carpenter’s hands are cracked and
dry. I have arthritis in my elbow and a yellow liver
that nobody sees. I never look in my bank account,
there’s money enough to last through the week.

I drive a Chevy 1500 with no power-options. It’s got
Cold AC. (It gets damn hot pouring concrete if you’re old like me).
I’ve got a Honda ATV and an imitation Harley D, a Vulcan 750,
An old cuff like me never goes for the real thing.

The vehicles I own take me over terrain I’ll never know,
Like how to beat through the brush and the sedge. Instead, I’ve
Worked below my means, fifty-hour work weeks
In G----------, on roof-tops, in flannels and jeans.

I have a daughter, she’s twenty-four,
and lives on her own with her bastard child. She buys
me watches from Wal-Mart, dark trouser socks, leather
loafers with tassles.

When she was little she was a terrific hassle:
“Daddy, no, you can’t smoke in here” she would say, rolling
down the window, and she never would cut through the field to get to school.
We’d idle in traffic thirty minutes before she’d be delivered.

Now, she arrives at my house each Sunday for dinner. She struggles
With love and men and I hope she does better. Every other week I slip
Her a twenty; it’s not penance, but it eases my mind. She might
Be the only thing in this world that I leave behind.