Thomas J. Langan

Tom, Tom, Tom, and Thomas,
that’s how the family tree goes.
My grandfather’s eighteenth birthday,
humid and bullet-riddled,
smelled of gunpowder and tobacco smoke.

He would’ve mocked poetry,
and hated hippies,
though he spent Walden-time
among the slender firs and red maples,
scanning for bucks and turkeys.
The tree stand, throne of hardness,
bore witness to stillness on dusky
November mornings.
He’d hidden in trees before, then as prey,
wearing a darker print of camouflage,
alone.
When his bomb-twisted spine ached beyond repair,
my father moved the tree stand for him,
even once he was too weak to climb.

A strange cedar box let him imitate
the call of turkeys in the glade,
and on Thanksgiving when I was born,
he held me and heard my warble,
lighter by half than that year’s bird.
My eighteenth birthday saw him
gone thirteen years—
His spiky beard, his coarse voice, and the
odor of self-medication.

I can’t grow a beard like his,
and my voice will never be as deep,
but my father taught me things his
father showed him how to keep,
of shaking hands and meeting eyes
and holding back in anger,
of leading where the tailwind blows,
as geese pursue the gander.

Thomas J. Langan is a student at Salve Regina University studying Philosophy and Political Science. His primary areas of interest are ancient philosophy, classical history, spirituality, and the Catholic intellectual tradition. Following his graduation, he will be obtaining a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science.