A Picture of my Father by Judith Harway

The year I choose, as if the choice is mine, to keep you
in is 1939, a breath before the war, the year
you wore this face. It reaches me like an envelope

addressed in long-forgotten writing: three-piece tweed suit,
firmly knotted tie, your hair that won’t lie flat, each feature
both familiar and oracular. Fifteen years old, and not the worst

of times. The grades you make come easy, and the subway
drops you at your father’s candy store to make a meal of nuts
and hopjes, mix a phosphate, and pretend to work. A good son

to the man beyond the picture’s edge, younger than I am now,
wiping his spectacles on the hem of his white apron. Business
is lousy, but then every business has been. Anyway, streetlights

are coming on. Soon you’ll walk home together, down
the Grand Concourse, stopping for challah on a Friday night,
not talking much. You’ll pass the park and turn on Walton,

entering the building where even the elevator smells of cabbage.
Home: The two rooms and a tiny kitchen that your parents
earned with thirty years of labor. A good son, you eavesdrop

on the homely talk, the headlines from the Daily Forward,
as you study at the table that your father bought your mother
when they wed. What am I missing in this story? Soon,

you’ll graduate, enlist. The world go up in flames. The world
that birthed your parents bleed to death, the way your father finally
will bleed his life into the bathtub. If the choice was mine,

I’d keep you here forever, never empty-handed, never
begging history to wait.


		Judith Harway
		A Picture of my Father
		The year I choose, as if the choice is mine, to keep you in is 1939, a breath before the war, the year you wore this face. It reaches me like an envelope addressed in long-forgotten writing: three-piece tweed suit, firmly knotted tie, your hair that won’t lie flat, each feature both familiar and oracular. Fifteen years old, and not the worst of times. The grades you make come easy, and the subway drops you at your father’s candy store to make a meal of nuts and hopjes, mix a phosphate, and pretend to work. A good son to the man beyond the picture’s edge, younger than I am now, wiping his spectacles on the hem of his white apron. Business is lousy, but then every business has been. Anyway, streetlights are coming on. Soon you’ll walk home together, down the Grand Concourse, stopping for challah on a Friday night, not talking much. You’ll pass the park and turn on Walton, entering the building where even the elevator smells of cabbage. Home: The two rooms and a tiny kitchen that your parents earned with thirty years of labor. A good son, you eavesdrop on the homely talk, the headlines from the Daily Forward, as you study at the table that your father bought your mother when they wed. What am I missing in this story? Soon, you’ll graduate, enlist. The world go up in flames. The world that birthed your parents bleed to death, the way your father finally will bleed his life into the bathtub. If the choice was mine, I’d keep you here forever, never empty-handed, never begging history to wait.
		Judith Harway's books of poetry include The Memory Box (2002) and All That is Left (Forthcoming, 2009). Her work has earned two fellowships from the Wisconsin Arts Board, as well as support from the Hambidge Center and the MacDowell Colony. She is on the faculty of the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.
		© Judith Harway All Rights Reserved