My Father Spoke in Aughts

  “I am overwhelmed with things I ought to have written about and never found the proper words.”

                                                                                                                     Virginia Woolf

    At Monday's Poetry Circle, our invited poet Brenda Hillman read from her recent book  "Extra Hidden Life among the Days".  What a revelation............... Can one  really write so honestly about one's father, examining their strengths, weaknesses, values and more?  Brenda certainly does in the Elegies section of this insightful and inspiring book.

As I was listening to her read about her father, I was thinking of my own father, his

hi    strengths and weaknesses, his values, the words he used.  I have carried some of the words he spoke deep within me.....the appalling east Texas racist expressions..... and have been so disturbed by them.   And ashamed.  And confused.  How could my gentle, loving, and affectionate father have used such words?  

Clearly, for so long I have been as Virginia says, overwhelmed by what I ought to have written.  Listening to Brenda read about her father freed something in me about my father.....and I found the proper words. In two days I wrote the poem, My Father Spoke in Aughts.