Showed Me

By Joe Gardner

I remember it all
Sometimes
Just like it was yesterday
Things we would do
Things he would say
Teaching me everything he knew
All the things that life
Had passed on to him

He showed me
How to thread a needle, how to sew my clothes
How to bait a fish hook
How to hone a knife
Or to use the can
The beans came in
As the pot to cook them in

He taught me that super glue burns
But will close a wound
And always look a man in the eye
No matter how afraid you might be

He taught me
How to find daily work for daily pay
How to find the weekly rate motel to stay
Teaching me how to make
Spaghetti on a hot plate
How to pull cabbage and lettuce and bread
From the dumpster
Behind the grocery store
How to pull the bad from the good
Buried beneath
How to survive
On the excess waste of better off people
How to survive
a world growing so much more brutal
How to maintain dignity
Despite the bone breaking poverty

I remember it all
Sometimes
Just like it was yesterday
As time walked on and got new lessons going on
Soon the things he taught me evolved
Darwin tool kit of survival
Keep the mind moving never stop learning
He was a good wood
And kept growing
Soon he become a mighty oak
With roots sank deep
And limbs spread wide under the sky
Raising a family
Being a man seeking and accepting humility
12 sober lesson
He snuck in
Like a secret future insurance policy
So when the day would come
And that day did arrive
I knew where to go
To heal soul mind and liver
After he died
So I could continue to live