Her Lament

Let’s keep singing . . .

On a Sunday afternoon, I sat with my dad on his porch in Mendota, Virginia. He took a puff on his cigarette as he rocked back and forth in his painted wooden rocker. With a flick of his finger, he scattered ashes to the wind while both his hair and the smoke danced like ghosts.

His eyes looked far into the distance as he listened to me weave the story of the first Tulip Poplar tree. There was a mother, and a father, and a child, Sits With Trees. The mother becomes a monster riddled with grief.

When I finished the telling, my dad crushed his cigarette butt into the tray beside him. He twisted the embered end to the left and then to the right.

You writin’ this down?, he asked.
I am, I said.

Satisfied, he nodded his head and leaned back in his chair. I picked up my guitar and placed the capo on a fret. A chord. A strum. It only took a moment for the song to come.