SATURDAY

I could always run rings around him, Davenport

Johnston Brown, my lead-in-the-pants step-father.

He worked hard for a living, hustling soft-drinks.

Every payday, once a week, on Saturdays, he

Would breeze into town from the territory

Where he tacked up window displays and drank

Coca-Cola. Home he would sit dull and drink

Coca-Cola, while mother cooked the only meals worth

Eating all that week. He ate her confections

In silence, while I gabbled on to mother

And asked her how he felt. She always told me

"Tired." Those days I played by myself. Once

He took me to a football game an autumn afternoon.

The crowd, the tackles, the popcorn, the chill air

Drove me manic. He calmed me with a kick.

Now, he looks like Father Time and it is too easy

To use the thunderbolt of my pen to dethrone him.

What can I say? Tote up his mistakes and mine?

Little father, you were not there enough and I

Grew up alone. Look at me. I disgorge a stone.