little fingers
painting pouting petals
tickling timid toes
little hands
dripping ice cream
digging in the dirt
little mouths
whispering wonders
singing so sweetly
little eyes
reflecting such beauty
tendering honest tears
little hearts
offering the biggest
boldest love of all
God, how I miss you,
my little dears
He was born Helmut Georg Waltrapp in Germany in 1939 as the world around him was burning, and several years later, his mother grabbed him and rushed him off to the forests around Bamberg to hide from the coming Americans. The rumors were such, they knew they could expect no mercy. Yet it was a wonderful American military family—the Ellingtons—who would befriend my father, and eventually bring him to the US as their adopted son, George Ellington—the name he would later bestow upon me.
In America, my father moved to California when his father was stationed at Fort Ord near Monterey. And when the Ellingtons moved back to Virginia, Papa stayed in Salinas, where he had met my mother, Dora. He adored her. He still does, years after her passing. He still blows a kiss to a picture of my mother every night before going to bed. Together they created such a joyful, nurturing home, and made sure I believed in myself. Their love and their faith in me enabled me to grow up excited for life and love, to be the first to attend college, to become a teacher, and to travel back to Germany and to Scotland, from which the two sides of my family derived.
Throughout my life I have known him to be nothing but strong and clever and caring and infinitely kind. A manual laborer all his life, he proved himself to be the smartest man I have ever known, always eager to learn new things and to share his happiness and laughter with others. If I have any skill at all in parenting—I would even argue that if I have managed to achieve anything of value at all with my own life—it is because he was my role model. And he still is. Happy Father’s Day, Helmut Georg Waltrapp. Happy Father’s Day, George Elwood Ellington. You are my hero. This is a wee verse I wrote for my father some years ago.
never have i known
a man who so deftly
blends the honest love
of his noble heart
with the potent vigor
of his indomitable frame
a man who composes
with sweetest care
tales of vibrant life
and fantastical creatures
striving to tend those
trembling in need
i have passed a lifetime
struggling to elevate
myself beyond my dull
and common being
so that i might find
peace in who i am
yet my greatest feats
pale in comparison
to the life he has given
for those he loves
and for his ever eager
and child-like voice
my highest honor—
my dear and beloved
father, George—
lies in the fact that
i am and will always be
your adoring son
she is a master at her craft
a builder of extraordinary skill
employing language deftly refined
and meticulously set, her words
one by anxious one rising
as another wall emerges
into the darkness of my days
prohibiting useless dalliance,
for all must have a purpose,
even this matter between us
that once glowed with passion,
this once glorious act of love
now extraneous to a fault
she has taught me much
as the months have passed
and I have struggled to find
reason in this structure she erects,
assuring myself that her silence
is warranted by my own
petulant brooding, her distance
the result of my loathsome features—
of course she does not touch me
for who would choose to fondle
this aging fetid flesh of mine—
how much easier to keep building
in simple untainted silence
I have learned my lessons well
I abide within these walls
I have become all of the silences
you have taught me to keep
[Thank you, dearest Allison, for your incredible talent at always discovering just the right words, which I then gleefully borrow from you.]
Life thins her
tearing across her skin,
shreds of being
trickling down down
like rivulets of blood
that never cease to flow.
Time wears her
bears down upon her,
bending her over,
molding, forcing her on
with merciless intent,
or without purpose at all.
Man abuses her
refuses her voice,
rejects the veracity
of her very being
while craven crawling
between her taut thighs.
And she?
She sings her!
She rises and rages and
whispers a wondrous vision
that none can deny,
so vibrant and whole
despite the scars.
Or perhaps
because of them.
when he speaks
there is silence
a stillness like nothing
he has known before,
and he wonders why?
he remembers
how she would listen
and respond, and his words
seemed ever to matter
to her when there was love
her eyes would sparkle
with affection for him
and he could almost
hear the passionate beat
of her most adoring heart
but when she lost
the man who meant
more to her than he did
it was as if his presence
were a noisome burden
he listened when she spoke
and offered his love
and tried to still
the anguish in her heart
so that she might heal
and there were times
yes, when he wished
that he had died instead,
for then she might already
have found her peace
rather that than to know
how little he mattered now
how foolish his words
how pointless his efforts
when silence were better
he speaks
and there is silence
expanding, filling his heart
whole and heavy until finally
he is the silence
which is when
he closes
his mouth
at last
and waits
Too timid these steps
as I cross over
pushing gently
through unseeing crowds
showering nothing of
the silence I crave,
fearful of the throng.
They dance and sway,
and I, staring at the sand
glistening around my feet
plead not with her
but with my own heart
for a chance to live
this one moment whole.
I see her standing there,
her back bare
beneath the adoring moon,
pursued by many,
loved so richly,
but by none so passionately
as by trembling me.
Which is perhaps why I turn
and trace my steps
back into the town,
the sounds of the players
fading behind me,
loathing once more
this poorly forged heart.
Coward that I am,
my hands shaking
as I order another drink
knowing all too well that
the bravest of all
are the ones
who feel everything.
you see, it’s this way:
all those so strange people
and all their equally strange beliefs
and odd traditions and clothes
and gods and sexual preferences
all their countries and cultures
and bizarrely performed rituals
and incomprehensible sayings
and very imperfect ideas
all of which frighten you
and leave you befuddled
and most agitated to imagine
that perhaps they might, oh,
just might move in next door
and tempt your children away
from the perfect truth
you most zealously embrace—
all those dangerous people
are just like each blade of grass
each gentle sunning dandelion
wishing for nothing more sinister
than that you do not step on them,
that you leave them in peace
I have known death well enough,
known it as most have—
from a safe distance,
and yet have felt it intimately
and oh so painfully.
When my mother passed
I was lying exhausted
having rushed that awful
distance to see her
one last time.
I cringed at how incapable
it—I!—all seemed,
her lying there quite
probably not hearing
my quavering voice.
And when my mother-in-law died,
I was in a train casually
traveling back to her side
without even knowing that
it was too late.
Yet now there is this—you—
mo ghràidh, facing a loss
all your own and here
this distant I quite trembling
can only wish you well,
and hope beyond reason perhaps
that you may feeling sense
any regard, any warmth
this my aging heart
can most eagerly offer you,
to hold your so tender heart
as it breathes again.
