NOTHING LIKE MINE

His hands are nothing like mine.
His hands were flat like a two by six.
His fingers flat and as wide as one by twos
and tapered at the fingertips like shims.
His legs are not like mine.
His legs were stout and bowed
like warped four by sixes tossed aside
to get to the straight and true wood.

His eyes are nothing like mine.
His eyes were steely sea-grey
and women loved to stare into them.
It skipped me and left me
with light brown, almost hazel, eyes.
And I laughed when he wore
those Clark Kent glasses
to read the news
and needed a magnifying glass
to see the dates on the coins
he was collecting
“without tying up too much change,”
for me.

His arms are nothing like mine.
His arms were rock-hard, muscular.
You’d swear he could whup Superman
in an arm-wrestling contest,
yet, firmly, gently hold a homer
to read its silver leg band
or flair out its wing feathers
or check its nest for squabs.

His aim was nothing like mine.
His aim was true
from his jungle cannon.
He used high school calculus
he learned to send
his rockets glare
to the spot Marines called,
there on Guadalcanal.
He’d had enough of that
for generations.

My aim, decades later
at pheasants taking flight
as if they were dad’s homers
stealing him away from me,
dropping those beautiful ringnecks
like Zeroes from the sky.

- By Anthony Buccino
from SIXTEEN INCHES ON CENTER
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.