My Father’s Map

by Beverly Osborne

He had a briefcase full of maps,

and on old slow days,

the kind of days when it seems  

your history might be forgotten

he would take them out,

unfold them gently,

trace routes to places he’d never been,

places he’d been a thousand times,

places far too distant to ever drive.

His maps were his books –

novellas from which he could read

knowledge long misplaced,

memories contained on the marked

blue and red routes –

this is where he broke down for 27 hours

here where he shared coffee with a race car driver

this road where he backed the 18-wheeler 2 miles on ice.

The backs of his hands were mottled with age –

purply blue veins in stark relief to paper skin.

Wrinkles and laugh lines crisscrossed his face like tributaries.

On his right foot the two cliff-deep scars

from toe to heel that hurt his whole life.

Scars I never saw until he was old & ill –

hidden like a secret.

Old wounds that kept him from war at 19

but kept him missing a part of himself –

that twisted like a river from his foot to everywhere.

Those veins, lines, wrinkles and scars

were my father’s road map –

one that I barely read when I had the chance.

Written over 80 years and more experience 

than I can yet imagine,

they were the path he left to his children.

Written in his blood, his leathery skin,

his booming voice and gap-toothed smile,

it is a map I can no longer read.

I re-fold it gently, properly, the way he taught me,

and on my old slow days to come

I’ll pull it out and read my father’s map.

~

Bev lives in Tribes Hill, NY. She started writing poetry in 8th grade and has continued, in fits and starts, since then. She works full time for a large federal government agency, and works even harder to retain her sense of humor and sense of justice.