When I Lost My Father (Complete Rewrite)

When I Lost My Father          

May was about to pass into June        
Red clover was in bloom          
in the fields around Natchez, Mississippi          
Honeysuckle vines grew on the fences and trees        
Whose flowers were picked by Children      
To pinch off the bottom          
and taste the sweetness within

“But my blackberry harvest came
long after Dad roamed  
The blueberry barrens of Maine
In the solitude of his shyness
When time was a cool breeze
With Grammie carrying the bucket
For a Fourth of July pie
Whose taste he still remembered
In his lonely years
When even tears were not his to own
In the solitude of his heart    

In his dreams, Dad was a Ghost rider
On the Boston and Maine railroad
Traveling the tracks from Saco to Nantucket
But his toy train set
Took him to a Haymarket station of the mind
Where he rode the rails to Lowell
Only to discover his father
Making blueprints of the soul
While teaching mechanical drawing
As Dad one day dreamed of doing”

“Father gasped for mercy from heaven          
In asthmatic prayers, ragged as a hobo’s coat”        

When wildflower summer          
Was a powwow princess        
In Iroquois regalia          
Whose songs haunted the night          
Where birds flocked from raven skies
Beloved held my hand          
On the dusky pillars of time          
In peace of burning sage

Singer from a northern tribe          
Poured her voice into the night          
Like a soft shawl shadow          
On the forgotten grass          
Of an Indian burial ground          
Where bones lay sleeping          
Under the evening boughs          
Where my sweetheart stood gazing          
Into the beginning of time          
Where even death could not follow  

“Heavenly butler greeted father at the door        
Where sorrows were left        
Like the dust on a jacket        
Swept away forevermore”