Harvey

I will remember you best

on the mountain in mid-summer

an L.A. kid at middle age

looking Bunyanesque

in lumberjack shirt and blue jeans

the chainsaw like a toy

in your mighty hands

and  your bearish shoulders

that seemed to never tire

as we cut and stacked aspen and pine

until it spilled over the rails.

I will remember your words

because they were few but incapable

of sugar-coating or brown-nosing

or telling anything

but the straight unpolished truth

and when they gave praise I knew

it was sincere and to be treasured.

I will remember your smile

(which always seemed a bit mischievous

the little boy in you that church

school and even fatherhood

couldn’t kill)  and the laugh that joined it

sometimes short and abrupt

which meant I had scored solo

but less often full-bellied gusto

which meant a home run. 

I will remember the night the Datsun

broke down in El Centro

in the hellfire of July

and you crossed the desert at midnight

to rescue your daughter and baby granddaughter

and bungling son-in-law

and when I offered to re-pay you

with money I didn’t have

you waved me off and said don’t worry

about that now just finish school.

I will remember you driving  

across the roadless reservation   

in your white panel van

because it could carry more stuff

to once again rescue

your daughter and granddaughter

and bungling son-in-law

from their furniture-less trailer

in the heart of Navajoland

and six hundred round-trip miles later

we were the proud owners of two beds

a sofa a dining table and the absolute luxury

of four kitchen chairs.

I will remember your unheralded skills

that built brick houses from straw

played Lazarus with dead jalopies

and strung the wires that shrank a nation

and carried the Magic of Voices

into our homes making us laugh

and making us cry.

I will remember you diving head-first

into the blue waters of Huki Lau

on a warm autumn morning

hoisting your youngest boy

on your shoulders and tossing him

laughingly into the sea.

And I will remember your voice

on the phone two years later

that awful afternoon in mid-August

when we wondered if you would ever

smile that mischievous kid smile again.

I will remember your new life

and the many good things that came with it.

But I will remember you best

on the mountain in mid-summer

when your legs were as strong as tree trunks

and your heart big enough to fill the sky

when it seemed as if we would never grow old

and never ever die.