Brooke Lehmann

Early Morning with My Father

Snow falls in late December, weak coffee  
brews, and I am back in our yellow kitchen, 
porch lights frame shadows around icicles. 

I wipe the sleep from my eyes, tiptoe
the dated mauve carpet like a fawn,
join my father at the oval oak table.

It is quiet, all but the subtle sigh and drip
of the Mr. Coffee in the black of the morning
before the sun peaks rosy over the cornfields. 

A red cardinal rests on the feeder outside
the frosted window, gentle friend to us both, 
syncopated space of our morning union.

I am here to hug him goodbye before the woe 
of his day settles like permafrost over dawn,
while muffled weather radio voices rumble. 

Before the grit and grease of steel boilers
stain the stitched shirt he wears resigned, 
Alcoa’s emblem tucked under winter flannel. 

I learn to love silence and darkness here, 
slow sips of bittersweet grace notes,
rest of a measured morning in a mug. 

Outside, the engine of his brown truck pings, 
he lifts each boot like a cement brick, 
laces drawn like tension on a violin bow. 

My early rising an attempt to sit with him, 
ease the pain of years of a job he hates 
while the day is still kind to us both.

____

BROOKE DWOJAK LEHMANN IS AN EMERGING WRITER WHOSE WORK FOCUSES ON RECOVERY, ILLNESS AND CONSCIOUS FEMININITY. HER POETRY HAS BEEN PUBLISHED BY TIPTON JOURNAL, PARENTHESES JOURNAL, BLACK FOX LITERARY MAGAZINE, 805 LIT, STREETLIGHT MAGAZINE, AND FORTHCOMING IN NOCTUA REVIEW. SHE CURRENTLY RESIDES IN SEATTLE, WA. FIND MORE OF HER WORK AT BROOKELEHMANN.COM