All My Fathers — Gone
Ann Howells | Poetry, Spring 2025
White hair like the nimbus surrounding medieval saints.
Grizzled cheek. Unshaven chin. Recalcitrant knees.
Forward tilt as you move, blue eyes sparking.
Shirt made lace by pipe embers, shuffling cards for pitch
or poker, quarter limit. Whistling Oak Ridge Boys.
Bring on salt fish packed last summer in earthenware –
boil ‘em, flake ‘em, add chopped onion and potato,
smother in bacon grease. That there’s good eatin’!
I envision you, decades past, slim, dark curl coaxed
to a pompadour. Wide brim fedora slapping your leg.
Driving that old Ford you painted using powder-puff paint,
then left to dry downwind of the chicken coop.
Every feather hand-plucked, though dimples remain.
Tuck ‘shine among oysters delivered to D.C. – break
from days sweating while shivering, building ice
in your hair.
Company of rough men since big enough to hoist
a winch, drop out of that one room school – fourteen
or so – but come Sunday in pressed shirt, belted slacks,
shoes shined to a fair-the-well, you wear religion
like long johns, close, warming – a personal religion.
No swearing in church. No Sunday flasks. Cigarettes
wait for the parking lot. Moan crab prices, sparse hauls,
weather, and government regs – always new regs.
Hit the numbers, buy a shiny showroom car, rounds
for friends at the Bucket O’ Blood on the D.C. line –
smash up at Fort Washington. Walk away no better/
no worse than a day before. Wear that red-stone ring
emblazoned with compass and square to Indian Head,
Alexandria, Bonny Blink. Win a turkey at the shoot.
Content with the straw you drew, second wife
after ten months a widower. No time to dawdle
at eighty-two.
Boyhood friends long gone, but this wife,
six grown children, bring joy, help when needed.
You’re singing, She’s ma darlin’, she’s ma daisy . . .
on a screened porch, rocking away disappointment
and pride. Just listening to receding tide,
chuckling over tonsils cut twice away.
Everyone a friend till proven otherwise.
How many apple custard pies did I bake?
Not quite right, you said, Not what I remember,
yet you ate every bite.
You are Woodrow, my father, but also Bryan, Bill,
Lynwood, Walter, Sath, Frank: uncles by blood
or marriage, fraternity or propinquity. Sun leached,
leather skinned, mole encrusted. I celebrate you,
watermen, web of islanders, woven warp and weft
of my flesh. I step fully-formed from your reverie.
__________________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“My father, his father, and his father, since before the Civil War, were webfeet, island watermen who made their living harvesting Chesapeake Bay. Islanders are a sturdy people and an insular people. No bridge connected us to the mainland until 1933, so the several main families intermarried frequently. I grew up among a web of cousins: first, second, and third, once and twice removed. I met my husband in college, first in my family to attend. When we married, we began a peripatetic existence, following his career, living in cities up and down the east coast, and eventually settling in Texas. At heart, I am still a webfoot, missing loblolly pines, scent of honeysuckle, and salty sea breezes. They're a part of me. Every footprint in the sand is a fossil, though waves render it invisible.”
Ann Howells's recent books are: So Long As We Speak Their Names (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Painting the Pinwheel Sky (Assure Press, 2020). She retired from editing Illya's Honey but currently attends two poetry workshops and a separate study group. She writes; she reads. She adores poetry festivals and tries never to miss one.
All My Fathers — Gone
Ann Howells | Poetry, Spring 2025
White hair like the nimbus surrounding medieval saints.
Grizzled cheek. Unshaven chin. Recalcitrant knees.
Forward tilt as you move, blue eyes sparking.
Shirt made lace by pipe embers, shuffling cards for pitch
or poker, quarter limit. Whistling Oak Ridge Boys.
Bring on salt fish packed last summer in earthenware –
boil ‘em, flake ‘em, add chopped onion and potato,
smother in bacon grease. That there’s good eatin’!
I envision you, decades past, slim, dark curl coaxed
to a pompadour. Wide brim fedora slapping your leg.
Driving that old Ford you painted using powder-puff paint,
then left to dry downwind of the chicken coop.
Every feather hand-plucked, though dimples remain.
Tuck ‘shine among oysters delivered to D.C. – break
from days sweating while shivering, building ice
in your hair.
Company of rough men since big enough to hoist
a winch, drop out of that one room school – fourteen
or so – but come Sunday in pressed shirt, belted slacks,
shoes shined to a fair-the-well, you wear religion
like long johns, close, warming – a personal religion.
No swearing in church. No Sunday flasks. Cigarettes
wait for the parking lot. Moan crab prices, sparse hauls,
weather, and government regs – always new regs.
Hit the numbers, buy a shiny showroom car, rounds
for friends at the Bucket O’ Blood on the D.C. line –
smash up at Fort Washington. Walk away no better/
no worse than a day before. Wear that red-stone ring
emblazoned with compass and square to Indian Head,
Alexandria, Bonny Blink. Win a turkey at the shoot.
Content with the straw you drew, second wife
after ten months a widower. No time to dawdle
at eighty-two.
Boyhood friends long gone, but this wife,
six grown children, bring joy, help when needed.
You’re singing, She’s ma darlin’, she’s ma daisy . . .
on a screened porch, rocking away disappointment
and pride. Just listening to receding tide,
chuckling over tonsils cut twice away.
Everyone a friend till proven otherwise.
How many apple custard pies did I bake?
Not quite right, you said, Not what I remember,
yet you ate every bite.
You are Woodrow, my father, but also Bryan, Bill,
Lynwood, Walter, Sath, Frank: uncles by blood
or marriage, fraternity or propinquity. Sun leached,
leather skinned, mole encrusted. I celebrate you,
watermen, web of islanders, woven warp and weft
of my flesh. I step fully-formed from your reverie.
________________________________________________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“My father, his father, and his father, since before the Civil War, were webfeet, island watermen who made their living harvesting Chesapeake Bay. Islanders are a sturdy people and an insular people. No bridge connected us to the mainland until 1933, so the several main families intermarried frequently. I grew up among a web of cousins: first, second, and third, once and twice removed. I met my husband in college, first in my family to attend. When we married, we began a peripatetic existence, following his career, living in cities up and down the east coast, and eventually settling in Texas. At heart, I am still a webfoot, missing loblolly pines, scent of honeysuckle, and salty sea breezes. They're a part of me. Every footprint in the sand is a fossil, though waves render it invisible.”
Ann Howells's recent books are: So Long As We Speak Their Names (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Painting the Pinwheel Sky (Assure Press, 2020). She retired from editing Illya's Honey but currently attends two poetry workshops and a separate study group. She writes; she reads. She adores poetry festivals and tries never to miss one.
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