The color of memory....

 NOT KNOWING

I do not know the color of my father’s eyes.

I feel the shape of him,

His arms around me as a child.

I hold his hand

And walk the Westwood hills in spring.

I slam the ping-pong ball

Across the net.

He dives for it and cuts a spin.

I miss.  But then we stop

To catch Fred Allen’s jokes.

The radio is propped inside

The workshop window.

I see the crinkle lines of laughter

And his squinted face in mirth,

But I cannot see the color of his eyes.

He reads to us, to June and me and Mom.

The Hobbit.  As Gollum, he hisses at us.

“My Precious.”  How we giggle!

His voice is bigger than the man.

Across the campus from the mathematics wing

I can hear his lecture.

Never would I take his class!

In our den, his desk is sacred

With its scribbled pads

And proof marks in the galleys.

But June and I can swing each other in his chair.

We wind the Victrola for “The Stars and Stripes Forever” march

Until he booms at us to cut it out.

Yet I do not know the color of his eyes.

His head is tilted to the right.

He wears a cap.

I find him with a trowel and iris tubers,

On his knees.

I see him both with straight black hair

And bald.  “You can’t grow brains

And a cover crop on the same pasture,” he says.

I cannot visualize him as a boy.

I never asked about the orphanage.

He told us Doitelbaum loomed over them

And switched their hands.

I never asked if he had friends.

He brings fresh flowers in to Mom.

She sets them in a vase and kisses him.

Her eyes are dainty blue,

But his I cannot see.

We camp in the Valley for a month

With Glacier Point above our tent.

My father builds the fire

And fries the trout we caught.

The ranger, Bert, can imitate bird whistles.

His eyes are blue.

But what was the color of my father’s eyes?

When he was dying, slowly, heart inadequate,

I’d visit him and read to him

Or pat his hand and hold it.

He didn’t really comprehend

Our presence in the room.

Behind that veil,

What was the color of his eyes?

He framed the world in camera finders.

Flash powder – startling, acrid, frightening!

But then, the prints,

With tiny, captured little girls

Held on black album pages.

After he died, I sorted through a thousand

Color slides of family.

Our dresses were in red or mustard yellow

Or patterned blue.

But his eyes that saw all this,

What color were they?

His childhood was a bleak and loveless one,

Yet still he gave us so much gentle love.

So well I know and love him,

But I do not know the color of his eyes.

Nov. 18, 2003