Ghost Pain

Ghost Pain

When Daddy came back from France

Mamma said he was a shadow

of himself, he shook, starting at one

a.m., like a geared up limb in a mid-

October wind, when there’s nothing left

of color but layers of brown, some

so rich they almost drip with it, liquid

brown, a thick leaded paint on the barn

door that Daddy, after shaking a first sip

of tea, would mix.  I’d watch him start

at the bottom and stroke up, thick

drips he’d catch when he lifted

his brush, stroke up from his feet

at the barn door and go up and up

until there were hips, until there were el-

bows, until the clavicle the neck the round

curve of a head and down the other side,

a hollow man, a door waiting to be

stepped through.  Days his shaking was so

he couldn’t eat.  He’d paint that shadow

on the barn door.  Days they lined up

like paper dolls, a whole family, out-

lined and then filled with soft strokes, his

flight of geese, almost soundless,

except a call out, a call out of his trench

lung but never returned.  Opening, opening

in a solid wood sky.  And when it wasn’t men

Daddy’d paint buoys.  And string a line

of them clear down the lane—a Noah’s tongue

he’d call it, hung there, beads of paint

rising up then sinking down into the wood

after he’d scraped old paint and cleaned the green

kelp and weeds, and the numbers, his

steady careful hand, best recognized

on the chop of water, he’d step back

and hand the brush off to his little grand-

son, more a pup than a boy: clean it best

you can don’t spill the thinner like you did

yesterday, stuff’s ready for a match, so don’t.

Ok Grampy….

And the buoys on their lathes…

and the hot sun of the end of June…

then into July

and the sag of line down to the grass…

and now Daddy paints a small shadow

on the barn door

and colors it in

a small brown shadow

and paints it again

holding the hand of someone taller,

Daddy’s height.  And the strokes

are slow.