Poem: The Smell of Tweed and Tobacco

I cannot read this poem of my father publicly without weeping, though I periodically try and always fail. It became the title poem of my collection about relationships, families and friends.

The Smell of Tweed and Tobacco My old man, that’s what we called our fathers then, as in my old man can lick your old man And here I am remembering, at an age where I myself could be accurately called by those same terms Well of course we loved each other It goes without saying and so I’ve said it And it rings true. rolls from the tongue, because that’s the way it was with us I kissed him on the lips from my earliest memory,     unselfconsciously until the day he died No turned cheeks for us, I remember brilliantly his arms around me, the smell of tweed and tobacco Locked in that embrace, the same for love or combat Only a minor variance in the hold, but who could know at such a tender age, the warfare of generations, the minefields in backyards, playing with loaded guns That darker side of growing up had unexplained sharp edges But it’s darkness that shapes the man and gives dimension to what otherwise would be too innocent a memory Flat and plain and way too smooth to honestly recall Each friend, each enemy and love, knew just a piece of him Myself as well, and I saw him largely through a youthful prism, the colors of his character depending on the light and angle, an intensity that blinded me and made him many men, all heroes There was a time, when I was just fifteen and finally asked my dad about a thin blue line that ran from his elbow to shoulder Not a scar, but something near to that, just below the skin He said when he was about my age he had a secret motorcycle An Indian his parents didn’t know about, he laid her down on cinders,     limping home, cleaning torn flesh     as best he could with a tooth-brush and wearing long sleeves that summer They never knew, or so he thought and he winked at me That story changed our whole relationship I saw him differently, knew my dad had been a boy, a kid a lot like me, who held back dreams, sometimes tricked the edge of truth and worked around his own father Sometimes winning, sometimes not, a momentary clarity between us when we were briefly man and man And yet he foreclosed all my young dreams, to substitute his own Took away my youthful indecision and carved it to another shape One that I lived and lied and struggled with, as though I might slip inside his arm with all those cinders and make him proud Like just another secret hidden away and tooth-brushed from truth,     hugs and tweed-tobacco smell bore me up and tore me down I saw myself as him and tried to live his life,     not mine Years of that, decades now and sometimes I still see more of him in me     than any son should, see of that fatherly craft,     an intensity that is not ours and yet we call a life in our name In recurring dreams I take off, piloting a plane that cannot clear the trees Full power, pulling up, they loom and loom those trees, then as disaster’s certain, brush the wheels and clear Ten years since I’ve had it now, but it’s out there, looming still The batter of a wall, that mason’s term for slope that gives it strength Larger at the top it falls There’s pain, but strength in compression If that weren’t hard enough to learn,     it can’t be taught, just done or not, Battering is understanding what to keep and what to throw away My middle years of struggle built too broad a top and brought me down, a deconstructed man Clawing through the rubble of wealth, mortar of mortgage, dust of broken promises, then hosing down what was left, what belonged, what’s well left behind Not to judge his wall or anyone’s, just see mine’s battered back He died as well as he could and not nearly well enough to suit him A tortured wasting away, a cancer that darkened his eyes with fear,     teaching me there was a better way than he’d found to do it Finally he flickered and was gone, a guttered candle and that was that What lasts? What’s left of him for me, gone now nearly fifty years? What of lessons and life, obligation and search, of prism-colors? Love lasts, or at least remembrances of it, fine blue lines on arms, broad-shoulders that hugged me, loved me and gave a damn The smell of tweed and tobacco

This poem is included in Jim Freeman's poetry collection THE SMELL OF TWEED AND TOBACCO available here in print or as an e-Book in your favorite formats.