Dr. Max Thaler with grandson Andy Dobbie Photo by Joan Dobbie 1978


Following is the manuscript of my chapbook, Rocking My Father:

***********************************
My Father

is a small man
fragile in his bones
like a sparrow. Here
I will paint him for you with
the careful strokes of a child's
watercolor brush.
It is easy to paint him.
He is so still.
He stands quietly, alone
at the water's edge. He is
so quiet that sparrows come
rustling the bushes.
*******************************************

Poland, 1913
My Father Goes To School

If morning after morning
that skinny grey boy, sick
with rickets, buried in dust
hides in the corner
under his bed
where she always
finds him anyway
prodding him out
with the end of her broom,
it has to be, that's all. It has to be.
And if my scared
little father, just four years old,
has to stumble alone
through that stark, demon-filled
cemetery, morning after morning
in the dark & the cold,
then he does.
And if, in Vienna, Adolph Hitler
who already at this point
in time has lived to grow up
must continue to thrive
slaughtering in due time
my father's mother, his father
and the rest of the over
12 million, raising up
in my old father's nightmares
a harvest of tombstones
thick as the stench of the air
around Auschwitz, then so be it.
*******************************************
My Father as a Red Fox

This isn’t his dream
this is real
and somebody’s wanting
to kill him
he’s running
he’s hiding
he stinks
of manure
he’s wading
the icy
rhine river
he’s shaking
in the loft of a barn
he’s alone
his wife gone
maybe dead
maybe not
in the distance
the prattle
of gunshot
close around him
the baying of hounds
closing in
he is judged
by the stench
that surrounds him
found guilty
of living
fear
is the only
emotion
fear unresolved
is a sickness
a virus
that alters
the blood
death
is the only cure

*******************************************
How My Dad Lost Some Teeth
On the Day The War Ended

Every day at a particular hour
everybody in refugee camp surrounded
the radio & they never gave up hope
& then one of those days
the radio voice actually
spoke that world-saving miracle
& everyone cheered & howled & leapt
into the air & the big burly guy
who was standing in front of my Dad
(who was six foot something
to my Dad's five foot four)
swung around laughing & shouting
with tears gushing out of his eyes &
his powerful elbow
burst like a small bomb
in my dad's open mouth, making
the teeth fly. And you know? said my Dad
whenever he told it. I was so happy
it didn't even hurt.

*******************************************
First Father Sonnet

You were not there when I was born. Alone
after three days labor, she spit me out.
Alone, I lay between her legs. No son,
but another daughter, this one dark -- about
as dark as any Jew. I looked like you.
Dad, were you thankful, or only relieved
when you arrived with your instruments to
cut the snake from my belly? And she heaved
me up to her chest, plugging my mouth with her
breast like a gag against crying. Crying
never accepted in our house. We were
meant to be happy, but you didn't smile --
and I couldn't. Dad, what is this weight I
carry -- whose burden? -- heavy as an unborn child

*******************************************
Country Doctor

Two years in a tight
N.Y. apartment: wife, in-laws, clambering
children. And now
this hard village bordering
Canada:
Mosquitoes the size of your finger
Kike/ Jew/ the word Nigger
Winters to rival Siberia

He wakes out of nightmare,
scrubs the night off his body,
covers his ears with a fur-covered cap.

Midnight or daybreak -- ice storm --
no matter. The phone rings. He rises.

*******************************************
How my Dad Lost Some More Teeth
From the Watertown Daily Times 12/8/55

Dr. Max Thaler of Parishville, a member
of the physicians staff of the Potsdam Hospital
was injured last night at 5:15pm
in a car accident on Pierrpont avenue. The doctor

who had been without sleep
for two days and two nights, was entering
the village in Pierrpont avenue, when his
car struck the rear end of a car parked at the curb.

The impact knocked that car into another car.
The doctor received a possible broken nose
and his front teeth were broken.
His condition is reported as good.

*******************************************
Double Exposures

My father loved elephants
& dinosaurs & National Geographic. He hated
the Germans & feared the Russians & voted
for Adlai Stevenson & rallied for
Eugene McCarthy & though I don't
know, I imagine he cried the night
that John Kennedy died. My father
loved God & he hated
the Germans. He took us
to Temple & sent us
to Hebrew school &
God was he mad
when he caught me one morning
shampooing the rug on Yom Kippur.
My father loved all the great apes
in the zoo. He believed in the lessons
of history. He loved making audio tapes, took
over a hundred home movies & worshipped
the classics from Plato to
Goethe, Mahler & Rilke. But
"Ach Gott!" how he hated the Germans.

*******************************************
Hunting Season

My Dad's the town doctor.
There's a man at the door

with his hand
blown off.

Pam's dad is the warden.
Three gutted does
hang on their clothesline.

We duck under
when we go over to play.

Cars have dead deer
on their roofs,
on their hoods.

Sometimes dead bears,
dead coyotes.

Somebody missed.
Somebody shot
somebody's cow.

Somebody's dog.

Somebody's brother.
Somebody died.

Every year, says my dad,
somebody dies.

*******************************************
Gifts From My Father

Dad, you gave me your eyes, your ears,
your heart, your religion & thousands
of dollars, three times
my own car, a house of my own
with a high spiral staircase, glass
bricks in the window, an old sugar
maple in the front yard

(& that time you walked in on me & my lover
you blushed, and invited us over for dinner.)

You forgave me
when she was still bitter. Supported
my children & stood like a wall
between them & the river.
If I said to you, Dad, I'm leaving,
you said, Here, have some money to help you

get by. If I said to you, Dad,
I'm coming home, you said, Here,
have your house back.
I'll put on a new roof.


*******************************************
Chess

Wide-eyed as a child, he follows her
movements. Amazing, he says in sheer wonder
as she sets up the board, I keep forgetting
the rules. And she thinks of a toddler
she once knew who studied

with just such wonder
each fallen leaf on the sidewalk
so that walking to the corner
took nearly an hour.

She explains
once again, as she would to a child,
the powerful gaze of the Queen, the King's
weakness, the steady forward stride
of the pawn, how the knight
leaps.

The year she was ten he taught her to play
with such patience
that she, who learned everything slowly
learned nonetheless, though she never
once beat him.

Even this late August afternoon,
one of the last waking days of his life,
they sweep up the pieces before it is over,
not because she is winning, but because
they have run out of time.

*******************************************
Watching the Nature Movie In Reverse

A slender buff antelope kneels in the veldt
lapping great gobs of mucous onto her baby
who crouches & folds himself small as she
opens her lank lower flanks drawing him
into her. See how she
rises? full as the African moon.

A great pride of lions draws back from a huddle, building
in the center of their circle, hunk by bloody hunk,
a healthy old zebra
who stands whole before us, stunned
in the African sun.

A drought has crept over
the wide plains of Africa. Whole herds
of wildebeest lie starved in the wind ridden dust.
But now, drop by drop, rain clouds draw in the water.
Flesh fills out the slack
sunken skins of dead wildebeest, breath
moves in their lungs. While here

in America
my thin elderly father, my drawn, worried mother,
my son & my daughter, my brother & I
are all in a huddle around the t.v.
roaring with laughter.
Fear death? Death is reversible!
We can see with our own eyes.

*******************************************
Hospital

Now & then for a particular treat
he would take me
to the hospital for lunch.
It was his favorite eating place, maybe
his favorite place altogether. He so loved
the hospital food, so loved the sights &
the sounds: the nurses, technicians, patients
with diseases he could easily diagnose
and usually cure; he loved meeting
the other doctors, loved the tart smell of
formaldehyde, Lysol, rubbing
alcohol, the waxy clean hospital floors,
wheelchairs & stretchers, the gift shop,
the chapel, the comforting
buzz of the x-ray machine. That day
in September when my dad's heart gave out
he lived ’til he got to the hospital.

*******************************************
His Last Night Beside Her

Waking to nausea, pain gripping the stomach,
rising to vomit, returning to bed relieved,
knowing, but choosing to not know too much.

Waking to heartburn & heavier nausea,
choosing at long last to wake her,
gripping her left hand --a lifeline--
but saying not too much.

Waking to vomit, there comes some relief,
but not too much.
Letting her sleep this time, choosing
to give her the gift of her sleep--

gripping the chest with both hands
as the pain rises higher.

*******************************************
The Day My Dad Died

was a hot September Monday in which
I swam naked

twice (once with my cousin out by the lake)
& again with those good

hearted folks

from Birdsfoot Farm commune
after the interview.

We followed the narrow dirt
path down past the raspberry bushes

munching our way

to the old Racquet River, stripped naked & entered
down there by the beaver dam

where the bottom is luscious black clay
which we rubbed with great pleasure

over our bodies and faces, basking
in sunshine, sighing

how good this is, this
is the life.


*******************************************
My Father's Body

lay on a cart
in the funeral home, my mother
bouncing around it
exclaiming again & again
see, he looks like he's sleeping
oh cover his mouth I don't like
it open like that but see doesn't
he look like he's sleeping? But
what lay there was meat, clearly
my father not in there & a tube
sticking out of the mouth
which appeared ghoulish & my sister
telling her daughter to kiss him
goodbye, I myself
had no desire to kiss the meat, I don't
even eat meat I was thinking but I did
press my forehead
to that forehead & felt
nothing
but numb death
but was somehow
possessed with the thought that
I, if I had faith enough
if I used all the force of my love
might have the power
to draw my father's life
back down inside that old body
since they hadn't yet embalmed it
or ruined it completely
but then I was struck
with the incredible wrongness
of what I was intending
of the rightness
of death for old men & my simple
human weakness in the face of it
he is dead, I said to myself
he is dead, let him be dead.

*******************************************
Father Death

Forgive me dad, I didn’t sit up all night
with your body, it’s hard to explain, I simply
forgot, we all forgot. Instead
I went back to the house and lay
on the bed beside mom. It was a long empty
night; we didn’t know anything about
the future, the house was echoing around us,
you were dead, that's all. Death
had replaced you.

*******************************************
We Lay Silent All Night

in that bed they had shared
for the past 40 years
without sleeping

Between us
the child
snoring lightly

His absence
a presence so vast
that this poem

I wrestle
seven years in the future
cannot hold it
*******************************************
Eating Seemed Like The Only Thing
left on earth to be doing so we did it

After our father died
there was a constant knocking
at the door, neighbors
bringing casseroles & jello,
slabs of cheese & sandwich meats
thinly sliced & carefully arranged
on aluminum trays. We didn't
have to cook for weeks. We
hardly said thank you,
just took in the food like
it was our due, stuffed our
bellies & our freezer & then
when the bell rang we opened
the door & took in some more.

*******************************************
Three Weeks After My Father Died

About a month or so
before he died
my father
started not liking
the black cat

or maybe he'd never
liked her. I couldn't
be sure. I'd been gone
for almost seven years. Moved back
just in time to be
with him a little. I wanted
to go on trips together,
try the mountains,
back roads
we'd never been on, but
he was too tired by then, I guess
busy
with his dying, though no one said
that's what it was
I should have known.

Three days after
my father died
a thin black tom
came into my house,
slept on the rug
beside my bed, tore at the door
when I put him out--
I was just about to give in,
let him stay
when he disappeared. I don't
know what that means
about my father. (At home
the old black she-cat sleeps
as always
on my mother's lap.)

Three weeks after
my father's death (on a light warm
yellow afternoon
and the Jewish New Year)

my mother and I
went out
to the grave, which was still
an open sore
of rough dirt, no stone,
not a blade of grass
yet growing.

And we stood together
in that quiet sun
in silence.
***
There was movement
on the heap of ground
that marked
my father's grave. A black
armored beetle
with dark transparent wings
lumbering
like an old pregnant woman
over the loose hard chunks
of graveyard dirt.

Under all that
dirt, I imagined the face
that had been my father's
now belonging to earth, now growing
a soft grey cover
of mold.
I imagined the beautiful delicate tendrils
of mold that would be growing unseen
in the dark
over my father's face
like a veil.

Later, at my sister's house
another coal black tom
came over to lie on my chest
plugging the hole there.

That night in bed I tried to speak
to my father. I asked him
what he needed, what he was wanting
to say to me

in his new mysterious language
of three
black cats and a black winged beetle
and the silence
of a sunny day.

I put his picture
by my pillow. I asked him
to answer me, tonight, in dreams.
I tucked myself, a little frightened

into bed, but all night
no dreams came and I woke
empty as ever.

I still haven't cried
for my father.

*******************************************
Rocking My Father

It is strange that I have taken to having fits
of depression, nightmare and so on,
but never cry.

I hardly remember the experience
of crying, though I am very much used to
experiencing sorrow

and fear. Last night I dreamed that my dead
father and my dead uncle
were walking with my mother, flanking her

two sides. They did not want me to tell them
that they were dead, and if I so much as
mentioned it their faces began to melt

and twist strangely
like ghouls. I do not understand why it is
that since my father has died

I am constantly dreaming of ghouls.
This is not what he deserves. My father was pure,
translucent, a white-haloed Einstein, who truly

unselfishly, meant well. Whenever I fell
into a fit of depression he would take me riding in
the car, and he would talk to me.

I don't even know what he said, but the rocking of the
car was always soothing, and for moments
at those times, the pain lifted.

So why is it now that my father is dead
there is so little closeness
between us? If I could, I would take him

out in the car. If I knew how, I would say the right
soothing words that would help him
through this hard time:

Father, I never called you Father, but maybe death
changes names. Father, I would say, I know life
was hard for you. I know the depressions I have

were yours first. I know you're afraid. But Dad,
dying is right for old men, even good. I want you
to know I forgive you. I love you. I know I don't show it

enough, but I love you. Dad, just let go,
ride with it, let yourself die. I think
if you died, I could cry for you.

*******************************************

Dream 1: The Old Man

was very weak, but he was
alive, and he could walk. His
daughters had to support him
as he tottered toward the chair
which he would sit on. The chair
was mired in quicksand. The
old man was in a lot of pain
especially his heart
hurt him, and his left arm.
The daughters knew he would die, but
he had not yet died, and he was
very weak, but he was
clean and smelled clean. His skin
was dry as fall leaves, translucent and
thin as petals. The skin on his upper
arms hung beautifully off
the brittle white sticks
that were his bones. He was a kind,
tender old man, and he was alive, and all
he wanted was to sit
for a few moments
on the sandy beach
in a lawn chair, so he could watch
the sun go down over the sea.
This was, despite the quicksand, possible,
since he was, truly, still alive,
however weak, and his two daughters
were there beside him with their
hands firmly rooted
under his arms.

*******************************************
Dream 2: His Visit

It was a dance at my old school, an elaborate
ball I think, maybe, me on the threshold
outside the door, actually I guess
it was more like a record hop
sort of a thing, or maybe
a square dance, you know, contra
dance like we have here in Eugene
but anyway it was back east, somewhere
back there & I was standing
outside the side door, the sky
vast overhead, almost alive, clear
velvet-ebony -- star-studded -- & I had
this adorable child on my hip, a girl,
maybe two, curly haired, voice
kind of tinkly -- imagine icicles
striking one on the other
like they do when it's winter
back east & your hair freezes over
because you've been swimming
in an indoor pool & you didn't dry
it enough before you went out -- except
there was not a thing wintry
about anything, not anywhere, it clearly
was spring, the air empty of snow
or even rain, pungent with lilac
& we were talking & talking & talking
like we couldn't begin to find
enough words to fill up the air
with, it was my Dad
we were talking to, healthy
& young, vibrant like I've never
seen him except in old sepia photos
of his high school days, long before
Hitler, before the war, before his
marriage, his exile, his children & he
was in a great mood too, smiling
as he almost never did really, his smiling
face light as a sparrow
on your finger, light as crepe paper, light as
if it were a party & it really was
a party too, except the real party
was inside the school, in the gym & my
baby started whining, she really
really didn't want to miss any more
of the dance, she so wanted to go in, so
finally I said to my Dad, taking his arm,
Come on Dad, let's go dance, but he turned
pale as a corpse, You know I can't do that,

he said.
And then I remembered:
My father is dead.

*******************************************
Dream 3: My Dad Takes A Boat Ride In Heaven

It’s him, yes, but old, far older than I want him
to be, awkward, clinging with one skinny white
hand to the grey splintering
dock, with the other to the wobbly
wall of the aluminum
boat, which he bails out with an old rusty
Maxwell House coffee can. He settles
his nearly transparent white body
down onto the seat, his bony
white knees sticking out of brown
shorts like two knobby points on
two breakable toothpicks, fumbles the
heavy oak oars into place, again
& again pulls the string on the motor
which finally catches. He steers
somewhat jerkily, but manages
somehow to keep his old boat in the channel
between shore & the sandbar
& after he's passed the third bend
where only the hunting
camps peek through the trees
he cuts off his motor, stops
steering, lets himself drift in a slow
lazy circle, knowing
he has forever. He listens to
the splash of trout, the peepers’ trill, the shout
of a distant heron. He sees five red winged blackbirds,
that old snapping turtle, the water so still
the trees form a green wreath,
twin darkening clouds
above & below him, two sunsets.

Acknowledgments: Three Weeks After, My Father's Body and The Day My Dad Died appeared in Fireweed Magazine, 1990-91. Chess and The Day My Dad Died appeared in a collective Anthology, The Passage Through, 1998
All poems original work by Joan A Dobbie Copyright 2005



*************************************************************************TO ORDER THIS CHAPBOOK AS A BOUND BOOK, OR IF YOU SHOULD BE INTERESTED IN USING THE WORK FOR WHATEVER REASON, PLEASE CONTACT ME AT: dobbiejoan@yahoo.com

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