In Celebration of Ordinary Men

For My Father, Who Fears I’m Going to Hell

And who last week spent three hours wading
through the dregs of the just-drained pond
whose former owner had assured him
could not support life. Though as the last
brown water gave way to grime, he bore witness
to the rip-flash of five slivered backs struggling
like sharks in sand – mudcats, he called them –
all on the verge of a bright, dry death
in the inadequate air. For my father, who worked
without waders through the afternoon, grappling
toward their slick, sharp bodies with bare hands,
who twice swallowed pond scum, twice
lost a shoe to the suction of sludge, and once
fell prone in the mire – a seven-pound catfish
with skin-piercing fins cradled in his arms.
For my father, who rinsed their silt-laced gills
and bathed each muck-thick body
with a hose, who placed them gently
into white buckets of water, called up friends
and neighbors, anyone with access to a lake
or large enough tub, anyone who would promise
not to slice the round bellies, not to spill
their polished viscera. And for my father,
who for the first time in months, slept
the deep untroubled sleep of a man who neglected
nothing – of a man, who for at least one night
had saved all in this life that he could.

I've never met her father, but I owe Cindy May Murphy a debt of gratitude for thoroughly introducing into my life the presence of this man, who thinks his daughter is going to hell and who is so strongly, passionately bound to life that he -- I have no doubt about it -- spent the coinage of one day of his worldly existence exactly as she described.

There are those (and they are many) who believe that poetry should focus prettily on lovely things. Now, this poem's is by no means an ugly topic, but people -- and poets -- might well skirt away from it: mud, viscera, pond scum (and swallowed scum, at that), suction of sludge and skin-piercing fins, the story of a man saving catfish -- catfish, for mercy's sake -- from a drained pond, harming himself, finding them homes, providing salvation and begging the promise of safe lives for creatures some people wouldn't even view as dinner (and few would term attractive). This man, this (likely) eater of fish, stood like a god and saved a group of pain-inflicting catfish from an arid end.

'For my Father' serves a necessary function. It is a reminder that the ordinary is extraordinary. I'm not writing a world seen through fish eyes. There is nothing so uncommon as the common (as in 'ordinary', not in 'vulgar') being. We carry vastness within us. It is not always the international crisis that calls it out.

How powerful (the rip-flash of its slivered backs) is this poem and its protagonist (who worked with neither gloves nor waders through what cannot have been anything but an endless afternoon). How tender and plain is the affection with which the writer sees her father, how honest and clear is her love for this man. Yes, she opens with his judgement and fear, but consider, consider the unwritten strength, the deep-muscled emotion tendoning this piece of work, consider the catfish flapping for their dry-drowning lives and consider -- stop and consider -- the bonds of hard-wrought love that keeps everything (including love) from passing before, beyond and finally, without even a fish-still gasp, away.