Edison Dupree

Walking Stick

—for Flint Born

1  Heirloom

Your granddad left your dad this stick
of sleek bamboo, with a spike inside,
so he could yank it out
and pivot and stab his attacker, and live.

Your dad left you a hard name
you joked about, and this frightening stick.
You twirled it like Charlie Chaplin.

—Then grinned, sharp-toothed, the way he did.

Then lay long sleepless days in bed.
Your mind wasn’t your friend.
But you were mine, somehow, for thirty years.
Fear’s heirloom didn’t win.

2  Kansas, 1930
What Kansas-sized threat
rolled through those amber waves
and that young man? He sold silos,
from dot to dot on the dirt road grid.

Alone at night, in the town’s
one hotel, in the dresser mirror,
what mocked him, as he practiced
his hero draw and his en garde?

3  Boston
Your Section Eight bedroom.
A straight chair for a nightstand.
On it, a distant village of meds
the hospice nurse left you.

You never did fight for your life.
You endured it, just long enough
to wake up from your dying,
and know my face, and say My friend!