My father died in 1995, yet I know him a little better each year, one quiet revelation at a time. This is a way of saying I know myself better, for the former cannot happen without the latter. How well he knew himself, though, I wouldn’t presume to judge, for he has surprised me many times, and will likely go on surprising me as long as my memory holds. It’s true he doesn’t appear nearly as often in dreams as he once did, but it does still happen on occasion. Whether I’m awake or asleep at those times, is open to question; I would have to say both. Either way, there is no thinking of him apart from the work he loved, apart from the vineyards he planted and tended with so much attention and care. Tractor, shovel, plow; sight, smell, sound — he loved it all, and the neatness and fruitfulness of his work on our small farm was admired all around.
The plow in Now and Then is a rusted old forerunner of a long line of French plows that were gradually pushed into obsolescence by the widespread use of herbicides and weed killers. In our backyard, it’s nothing less than a monument, sinking slowly into the ground in the shade of a big fir tree, which, as strange as it seems, he didn’t plant.
The more now I am allowed to enjoy, the more then there is in my life; yet somehow, each day is fresh and new. This, I think, is what the poem is about. That it was written on my father’s birthday, twenty-three years after his death, proves our mutual affection.
~
[ 1968 ]
Categories: Annotations and Elucidations
Tags: Affection, Death, Dreams, Firs, Life, Memory, My Father, Our Old Farm, Plows, Shovels, Tractors, Vineyards, Work
William Michaelian 