Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.
And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practises tying
His father’s tie there in secret
And the face of the father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.
Donald Justice (1925-2004)
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"Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to"
This put a smile on my face as I've slammed a few doors on my journey. Thanks and Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday! I read the Justice poem in my best Garrison Keillor voice....seems like his sort of thing. Hope as is well with you.
Sentimental, true, but it's still good -- I didn't mean to disparage it entirely for being so puzzlingly patriarchal.
That is a wonderful line about the "stair landing as a ship"... yes, I have felt this, too. The thing about this poem that scares me is the awareness of ends; maybe I just see too much death everywhere anymore, but it seems inexplicably there, lurking within the "something" Justice describes in the twilight and insects and slopes. Like all good poems, though, there's a lot of meaning in there. Thanks for posting it. ENJOY YOUR BIRTHDAY.
I certainly see the sentimentality of the poem, but I also respond to the metaphors that turn the stair landing into a ship -- turning 40 is a pause, and the poem doesn't say whether you're going up or down those stairs, but whatever you choose, they're moving.
I have literally packed chunks of my life into boxes and stored them away, not in a spare room, though (we have none of those at my house). And last night I read to my kids for an hour and a half, instead of watching TV, so my focus is on what I'm doing now, instead of tottering around with those old boxes of what I used to think was important. (I can pull them out again when the kids no longer want me to read to them.)
I wonder... should the title be "Fathers at Forty"?
Alles gute zum Geburtstag, Herr Dr. Jerz! At first I empathized with Justice's poem, but now that I read it again, I'm sorry, but I must completely disagree with the maudlin paternity in his premise. Now is the time to OPEN doors, not close them quietly. Rage rage against the dying of the light and all that. And where's the mother in his poem? Is his wife in the backyard behind the mortgaged house, buried beneath the crickets? This poem is disturbing on many levels. But happy birthday and, as you gamers like to say, welcome to the next level.
-- Mike Arnzen
Rosemary, I tried to e-mail you a response, but for some reason the message bounced back.
Poems my children wrote for me:
Daddy, you're 40 now.
We all say "Wow,"
To the guy who would never doodle
And say "don't footle"
Love Peter (age 10)
You're a lucky old guy
Who flies in the sky,
Because you have me for a daughter, who
Helps you when you
Are sick.
-- Carolyn, age 6
To Daddy:
You're a lucky old guy
Who would fry the sky (why?)
Then you die.
Love, Peter.
Happy Birthday Dennis!
Thanks for the good wishes, Eric. Glad to hear of the progress on your dissertation. I have no major projects scheduled for this Christmas break, so I was hoping to devote some serious time to our bibliography in January.
Hi Dennis,
I guess we are about the same age (I'm 42). Any news on our project for 4 C's next year? My (first) three-chapter dissertation meeting is scheduled for November 15th. You sure are a good father!
Thanks, Eric.