Will Thomas - My Father's Song

Monday through Friday,
he was the salesman.
A 1954 two-door Ford,
robin's egg blue
stuffed high and forlorn
with sample cases
and cardboard-leather satchels.

Along the roads
of Michigan, Indiana, Ohio,
he was the tri-state man.

Sad, sleepy towns-
Flint, Elkhart, Toledo.
Not quite second-rate hotels,
fading carpet,
stooped and nicotined elevator boys.

Thin slice of life.

But on Saturday afternoons,
three or four highballs to the wind,
he wielded a battered old trombone:

against the silence of gone dreams,
against the crippling images
of long distance phone calls,
B-girls and boozy Catholic guilt,
against the crackling tin
of local radio stations,
bird shit and bugs,
drizzled across the windshield.

Gone dreams.
Gone dreams.

Saturdays.
A thinning flannel shirt,
pleated brown pants
(shiny in the seat) ,
whiskey and water,
sweating circles on the coffee table,
two Lucky Strikes, smoldering
in an amber ashtray.

Hair mussed.
Eyes liquid.
Lips thick with Seagram's.
And the deep,
loose,
and plaintive whine
of a tarnished, unyielding trombone.

Melancholy-
if ever a word meant anything,
if ever a word was right.

Will Thomas

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