The Red Letters
In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.
To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.
––Steven Ratiner
Red Letter Poem #211
I Get to Witness My Father Perform Surgery
Frayed artery,
And my father’s fingertips
Squirm like larvae in the blood,
Go under, and hatch into a pulse.
The heart monitor sutures
A future across the screen.
In an hour, then daily,
The man will be allowed to awaken.
How often is blood
Soothed like a child?
How often are we saved
By what we can’t remember?
––Jack Stewart
They’re not actual people, our parents––or so we might find ourselves believing as young children, desperately trying to comprehend the world into which we’ve been born. They’re more like cosmology, the overarching design of the universe; they’re our geography, daily weather, bulwark against all threats, not to mention source of endless fascination and entertainment. In addition to providing the obvious necessities of survival, parents (if we’re fortunate) establish that invisible bubble of love that engenders in us a sense that our presence, too, might have an actual purpose in this existence. But as we grow, our relationship to these household demigods can’t help but evolve. For most of us there is something of a cyclical nature to our assessments: how repressive, abrasive, arbitrary, tragically uncool Dad and Mom seem; and, a few years later (or months, or even hours), they are suddenly the epitome of wisdom, an oracular presence we approach with something like awe. “When I was a boy of fourteen,” according to the famous comment attributed to Mark Twain, “my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
Jack Stewart’s father served as the Chief of Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic until his untimely death at age 53. He was one of the pioneers of kidney transplantation, and the Cleveland team was featured in Life Magazine for their accomplishments. As a 16-year-old, the poet was able to experience first-hand the effect his father’s work had on the world around him. This, to me, is one of the most profound moments in our psychic development: when we are finally able to perceive our parents as individual human specimens: flawed, but marvelously complex and still-evolving, with––and this part is most crucial––projects and passions at the core of their own lives that predate our arrival. Reading Jack’s new poem, I was impressed by the extraordinary power of implication at work in these two intense six-line stanzas. Witnessing his father’s surgery seemed to alter his understanding of the man, of the father-son bond, and perhaps the human condition as well. The poem begins with mortal jeopardy, yet marvels at the uncanny skills we’ve developed to safeguard our precious lives. How unexpected is the poet’s description of his father’s efforts––“fingertips/ Squirm like larvae in the blood,/ Go under, and hatch into a pulse.” Instead of immanent death, it suddenly feels as if new life is burgeoning, a second chance. Did you feel the jolt of those two rhyming trochees–– sutures and future––their rhythm imitating the suddenly-renewed heartbeat that we see depicted on the monitor? And toward the poem’s culmination, Jack leaves us with a rather startling question: “How often are we saved/ By what we can’t remember?” Is he thinking of the anesthetized patient? Or all the instances in our unconscious lives, from infancy to old age, when we’re rescued by unseen hands? Most of our days, we’re only barely aware of who and what are responsible for our survival. Perhaps we receive some illumination when we, in turn, become parents, charged with keeping some other fragile little being alive.
Jack was educated at the University of Alabama and Emory University, and became a Brittain Fellow at The Georgia Institute of Technology. His first collection, No Reason, appeared in the Poeima Poetry Series in 2020. He’s been widely published in literary journals like Poetry, the New York Quarterly, and the Iowa Review, the work garnering nine nominations for the Pushcart Prize. He now teaches in Fort Lauderdale at the Pine Crest School where he directs the Talented Writers Program. When he first sent me “I Get to Witness…”, I told Jack I’d save it for when Father’s Day came rolling around. Perhaps the piece will prompt a visit with your own dad––if that’s still a possibility––a chance to appreciate once again what of his life is now enmeshed in yours. And if that is no longer an option, maybe the poem can be the occasion for a few minutes’ imagining about the numerous broken places inside us, many of which were healed by a father’s deep attention.
Red Letters 3.0
* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:
steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com
* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:
https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices
and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
http://dougholder.blogspot.com
* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on Twitter
