Friday Fiction (?): A New Poem for Father's Day

Who Knows What My Poppa Dreamed?

 

When my father plowed rows with a mule

And smoked corn silk at age thirteen,

Watching Gene Autry up on the screen,

Who knows what my Poppa dreamed?

 

When my father shipped out overseas

To wander brown fields and hills Korean

And everything else was army green;

Who knows what my Poppa dreamed?

 

When father finally met my mom;

He in his thirties, and she a teen.

As they danced together at canteen,

I wonder what my Poppa dreamed?

 

When my father saw me in the crib,

His second son, looking none too keen,

 A wailing lump growing like a weed,

Who knows what my Poppa dreamed?

 

When my father started hauling steel

He had a hard time staying clean.

He read Westerns in the truck-stop’s gleam.

Who knows what my Poppa dreamed?

 

When old, father neither fished nor bowled;

He rode his lounger and watched TV

Where humble men laid low proud people’s schemes.

I wonder what my Poppa dreamed?

 

My father sleeps in the warm dark earth

In his coffin’s blue metallic sheen.

He heeds not the sun nor pale moonbeams.

I wonder what my Poppa dreams?

 

First Draft: 9:30 PM, 6/11/25