Tuesday Poem: From "The Grove in the Eye of Light" Poem Series

Tree of Heaven ( Ailanthus )

When Uncle Joe smiled
there was always a glob of
brown tobacco on his front teeth.

When he leaned back
and scratched his beer belly
a fog of sweat and sour washcloth
billowed out and filled the room.

My father and mother
tsked and shook their heads
as the list of his offences grew.

How everyone in the neighborhood
knew he’d driven his father’s car
right through Scalvino’s fence,
and then sat there grinning
ear to ear because he was so
tanked up he couldn’t move.

How he staggered into
his mother’s bedroom,
and peed in her dresser drawer,
soaking all her neatly folded,
lavendered personals.

How he ate leftover spaghetti
off the table, grabbing it
by the handful from the icebox,
so he wouldn’t have to wash a dirty plate,
sitting and smacking his lips
in the blue glare of
the midnight kitchen.

As an infant he’d been sickly,
so his mother said, when she heard them,
but she had to agree,
that trouble lurked behind him
more often than not.

When he married he’d been
the only one to leave the Catholic Church
for the sake of his Lutheran wife,
which amused his father greatly, but nearly
killed the woman who prayed for his soul
every morning at six o’clock mass.

When the family gathered in summer
for picnics and softball, his three boys
ran wilder than the rest of us,
and he hollered at them, every
chance he got, in a voice
as sharp as a hawk’s cry.

So, even we nieces and nephews
took to rolling our eyes
whenever he came through the door.
How had such a bad apple
fallen into our bunch?

I mulled this over for years.
It scared me that a person
could get so lost, like a sheep,
in a flock that should have loved him.

Maybe he’d been sent by God as a test.
After all, didn’t He send boils to Job,
and tell Lot not to look back, no matter what?
Weren’t angels always knocking on
people’s doors, disguised as beggars?

It’s all about taking the measure of people’s hearts.
And Uncle Joe had a heart so big
it eventually killed him. He was the kindest
person I knew, and he never smiled without
a little laughter at himself. Whenever he listened
to another person’s troubles, he always cried a little bit too.

If Uncle Joe was here to test us, we were about as stiff
and stuck and brackish as Lot’s poor wife.