My Papa's Waltz

The poetry word for the day per Mona is DANCE. I have been looking for an excuse to give you one of my favorite poems, this is it. I did not write it, unfortunately. If i had been able to write this i think that my life would have taken a different path.

Please take the time to read it out loud, even if only to yourself. Any errors are mine and i apologize for them. I am working from memory here.

My Papa's Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

-Theodore Roethke

I studied Roethke when i was getting my first college degree. I felt a special connection to him all through high school and college. He taught at the University of Washington, where i completed my useless liberal arts degree. Long before i went there, but still. He drowned in the Boedel's swimming pool, out on Bainbridge Island. I visted the Bloedel Reserve last year and saw the swimming pool, which is now a zen garden and filled in with sand. I discomfitted our tour guide by asking if this indeed was THAT pool.

You will find no comfort here
In the kingdom of bang and blab.

-a tiny bit of one of Theodore Roethke's longer poems.