Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Contest

Six Ways of Looking at My Father
by Virginia Lore

Second Contest
First Place

Six moments with my father:

I. He is my basketball coach.
He benches me for the last game
because I have flaunted it,
run away from practice,
told the other girls I can because
The coach is my father.
He says he will never be my coach again.
He never stops being my teacher.

II. My father knows everything.
I ask him which is true:
Adam and Eve
or Monkey and Dinosaur?
He says:
Both.
There is more than one kind of truth.

III. My father heals people with the colors
pouring from his hands
and the words
seeping slowly from his mind.

IV. My father teaches me to drive.
He says:
Keep it between the ditches, and
Don't get too confident. You can do everything right
but the other guy can still get you, and
Drive like I tell you; not like I drive.

V. My favorite father bribes me:
says he will buy me a new Bobbsey Twins book
if I will try the waterslide just once, just try it.
I go a hundred times
until everyone else has left the pool
and there is no more time to read anyway.

VI. My father is now moving
away from the earth.
He takes the wings
of a strong dove,
leaving the packs of fragile hawks
and small-minded eagles.
Some day I will fly after him,
but for now I just watch
the wisest man I know
navigating the winds.