Beyond the snow-covered mill yard,

sleet dissolved on the open river,

my grandfather's working years

dissolving among stacks of pulpwood.

As afternoon darkened, the old man

clenched crooked teeth on a cigar.

Then my father's face loomed in the

doorway, reddened, a setting sun:

He stamped snow off his overshoes

on the wooden porch. Closing

the bowling alley had delayed him,

sweeping, preparing the bank deposit.

He took his place at table among

knives a sober man might have noticed.

I watched the bravura show of heaping

his plate, then the failure of appetite

and doomed campaign to laugh it off,

the mutual contempt of two women

who hated each other, his mother

and my mother. Midway through the meal,

he rose unsteadily, lurched toward

the sofa, and succumbed -- then I knew

some line of defense between myself

and their contempt had also broken.

Thirty-five years later, I imagine

his shame, struggling from bilious

sleep on Aunt Mae's sofa, food

turned to burning bile in his stomach,

a damaged silence, snow falling through

black panes, the shaky drive home. . . .

Having dropped his self-protection,

how could he be anyone's protector?

At that moment, I became responsible

for him: After that nothing could stop me

from being his ten-year-old father

and husband to his unhappy wife.