He
was a simple farmer
in
a farming town, like his father’s
family
before him, planting beans and corn,
and
a butchered hog for a future
coming
one year at a time,
and
a common laborer, laboring
at
odd jobs for other men, to pick
up
a few bucks hauling logs,
picking
crops, and getting by;
was
even a soldier once, newly married
and
called up in World War I, France,
leaving
behind wife and child
for
a distant land he’d never have seen
otherwise.
Back home to the land,
he
came, and to the farm, a new start,
and
then a move to the coast, following
his
brother, leaving the farm behind,
yet
taking it with him, all that he knew.
He
worked there in the shipyard,
like
so many, another war on the horizon
with
sons to send off as he was sent,
a
machinist now, holding him over,
till
he became finally what I expect
he
always wanted to be, what he was,
a
carpenter, Jesus’ trade, a builder building
other
men’s dreams, and his own, for Doris
and
the children, my father and aunts
and
uncles, growing up; and for their children
and
grandchildren down through the ages
still
to come, a long line of dreamers,
building
families and building lives,
generations
sustaining this legacy
of
love passed on, for we are him,
his
dreams built into us.
