Distance

Daddy would have been 107 today. Twenty-nine days in the hospital‘s care; Six times I’ve driven to check on you there. Thirty-some times by the telephone line asking of you and appeasing my mind. Thirty two years since I left our hometown, tethered by love, flying high, anchored down. How many months have I failed to call home? Years slipped away, my own family’s grown. Longing now draws me to you once again over the greening of flat Texas plain. Anson and Stamford and Haskell I’ve passed, towns on the highway, each like the last. Cotton gins, stock tanks, and lacy mesquites, pump jacks and furrows with hope-sown new wheat. It’s eighty miles yet to the village Dundee where mixed with the cattle eight camels roam free. Not a surprise now, I know they are there, symbols to me of a truth I should share. Daddy, I love you, now get back your strength; Mother and you will return home at length. Starting today I’ll be often in sight, incongruous as camels in Texas sunlight.