James Carroll

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.