DAD WAS CORRECT

My father was a horticulturalist. He also had a job as a regional inspector/auditor in a large bank but that was not very important except as the means to pay for the education of his three children.

Occasionally he told stories he had heard and a few events he remembered. World War I during which he had to work in the State Railways to escape death in Gallipoli battles. He was only the second student from his class who had survived. His work on the greening of Ankara, his establishment of the first Istanbul Chamber of Agriculture and the first official cut-flower auction house. He was the keeper of the three hundred year library of family journals and religious texts which he planned to translate but never did.

I was sure that he had a great deal to say but never told him that. Now, twentyseven years after his death, it occurred to me again that he must have had a great deal to tell me. So I sat down and wrote this poem, remembering our garden, the Ottoman tulip he presented to the Dutch envoy who came in a royal carriage from Holland, the times we worked cutting and bunching flowers for the auction and the smell of the wet earth and the grafts, seeds and bulbs all of which made up the person who also looked at my fortune only once from an old journal to tell me that continuing  to date a specific girl would cause major problems for me in the future.

For the last thirty years I have been trying to make up for him, talking with children, teens and young people, listening to them and helping them to search and find what is best for them.

Then, watching Alan Arkin, Michael Douglas, Elliot Gould and Danny de Vito tonight, the first line of this poem stuck in my mind.


To Become My Own Dad

"Children is what it is"
the birds are taught
so are the porcupines
and also dad
as he said
one drizzly day
when he invited me on the way
to one
or more
flower beds

It was the mystery
the desire to hear the story
that took me
and urged me
to dig out the bulbs
of defunct tulips and hyacinths
pretending to be dad

hoping that words will follow
and flow
writing the story
even ending it
this rainy day
sixty five years away


December 30. 2018