Place poem written for creative writing (and for my dad).
The morning, the wet gray bright morning,
Ice on the tips of my nose and ears, while body is warm in
the hollow log
Of a sleeping bag, forest green;
Limbs coiled about themselves like tree roots
Made it through the solid cold of the night like dark, soggy
soil.
The ground is hard, tooth marks in my back
From the one malicious stone squashed beneath layers of body
and canvas.
Too cold for waking, too cold to draw back into sleep
Best to pretend for two minutes that feel like fifteen
Until the other little ones cannot stand it longer, and
Pop from their bags like wildflowers at mention of spring.
And then there is no shady chance of sleeping.
The day has begun ahead of time, right on schedule.
When I was a little one, I woke later
My father was gone, and his footsteps muttered of dust and
sticks and gravel outside the tent.
I would worm from my sleeping bag after a brief hibernation,
Slough it off like a snakeskin charged with static
Teeter past the rectangle homesteads belonging to brothers
and sisters, half-waking;
My little sock feet made the canvas crinkle loud.
I sat at the foot of my mother’s bed and pulled on my shoes,
hasty, meticulous,
Then coaxed the flimsy zipper up to greet the fresh day.
I remember camp chairs, log seats, and cold metal benches
Orange morning fire throwing sparky sleep from its eyes
Such warmth, such unimaginable warmth
Thank you, Dad, every time.
Every time I would sit, knees and ankles huddled together
Sucking the heat from hot chocolate and fire pit
I watched him pick chopped logs from the stack and hand them
to the fire
Watched him unload from the car the breakfast things
Watched him in his coat, black or navy blue
Marveled at how he knew things, packing things and fire
things and tent things and sleeping bag things
Wondered how he warmed the hot chocolate and built the fire,
every time, with no one
But the freshly split morning outside the tent to greet him.
