My Mother kept treasured things like she was running a little museum She kept the albums of family photos going back to the beginning. She had a knack for picking tiny significant things as keepsakes: A tiny indian head penny bank full of pennies , a little writing book of mine from first grade; an envelope of confetti from the celebration of VE day (WWII) in Times Square.
But my Dad kept nothing. There were no pictures of him as a boy, no mementos. His father died 3 years before I was born but I have never in my life seen so much as a photo of him. I have no idea what the guy looked like except I heard later he was lanky like my brother. I'm short and compact like my other Grandpa.
My Dad was a writer. He was an advertising copy writer in the fifties and early sixties on Madison avenue. He was a Mad Man, and when I watch that show I can practically picture my brother and myself as the generally ignored children in the background. He won a number of advertising awards including one for a rather risque commercial during the black and white fifties where the two protagonists were only seen by their glowing cigarette tips as they exchanged pillow talk.
He also wrote the once famous "Please mother, I'd rather do it myself!" Anacin commercial.
But before he wrote commercials, he was a poet.
While he was an ensign in the Navy in WWII he wrote this:
FOXHOLE ELEGY
Far off, she sleeps,
And where she is, a baby cries.
Where I am, a soldier dies.
And God's on a mountain, hiding his eyes.
Far off, she sleeps.
Far off, she wakes
And where she is, the grass weeps dew.
And where I am the quick are few,
And I sleep close to a man I slew.
Far off she wakes.
By A/S Richard B. Miller USNR
And after it was published, Carl Sandburg wrote him a letter of encouragement, to tell him he thought he was a great talent.
This was the only poem I had ever seen by my father and I had as good as forgotten it. But while cleaning out boxes of papers my Mom left behind when she died, I came across a big fat manilla envelope stuffed full of papers and on the outside was written in my Mom's handwriting:
Richard B. Miller: Poetry, etc.
And I realized in a moment that I was in possession of a pile of his poems, all entirely new to me.
My Fathers' voice with new things to say, 4 years after his death.
I opened it and checked just enough to see that it was real and tucked it away in a safe place. I have been waiting for the right state of mind to sit down and go through it, but so far the right state of mind doesn't exist.
But I've been feeling a pressure grow in me to look and last night I took out the first one in the stack and read it. And it was good, it was actually very good. Not great but solid and clear and carpentered true. And more than that, it was young. It was edgy and lean with an energy younger than I possess today.
I put the rest away, determined not run downhill through them. I will take one out every couple of days for the next month or so till I run out, listening to my Father talk to me for the last time.
