There Was a Father

Peter Mladinic

“I took a life, your most precious, from you

and for that you desire fervently an end

to mine; at the end of a rope, firing squad,

electric bolt, needle; I see the why of that.”

Then there’s this, handsomeness of the man

who said those words, the murderer’s face,

mirror of Brando Dean Barrymore the Great

Profile.  Not handsome but hideous as time

crept in, and cancer snuffed out the jaw.

Time made him outward mirror the inward.

What was dreamy now ugly.  Nothing like

the day he took her from a pay phone

outside a store, into a car, out to a field

an adolescent violated, her life he ended,

your most precious. Forgive, he knew not

what he hath done. Oh no.  Retribution,

justice, his life, hideously deformed, for hers,

his hands choking her once lovely throat.

Must pay.  In a less imperfect world will pay.

In the mirror he sees the last pair of eyes

hers looked into, only the face hideous now

as his soul that day.  We’re going to remove

a jaw, time’s minions whispered like witch

babble at a cauldron into the ear of this one

with no conscience. His once dreamy face

ugly as any you’d see in a crowded mall.

But a face, a life still, that eats and sleeps.

A life for a life, that hasn’t happened. Then

further back in time, a man neither father

nor monster, but a church deacon wanted

to go higher in station, but instead,

dismissed, said near a desk in a study,

to his superior and his superior’s spouse,

she sparking the dismissal, her husband

acquiescing, turns and says to these two,

“I hope you live forever.”  A deacon

at a door in a novel.  Trollope’s readers

felt the sting, in Barchester, the deacon had

wounded them.  “I hope you live forever.”

Why I think of it now, thinking of the father

of the girl and the monster with no jaw,

I’m not sure. Taken at face value, I guess

there’s a gap between live a long time

and forever.  Forever said by one filled

with hatred, who felt wronged, no blessing

but a curse.  He took other lives too,

who took a father’s most precious, he

saw her at a pay phone and took her away.