Tag Archives: poems about my dad

My Father in Me for dVerse Poets

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My Father in Me

After those first two dreams, you never returned again, Dad. So now, more than 50 years after your death, I am instead looking for you within myself. I find you every time I retell an often-told tale adding embellishments as you did, or in my obsession with other people’s babies and that yearning to hold every one I see. I remember your holding the babies of tourists in Mack’s Cafe or Ferns “so their folks could finish their meals.” You loved the tiny ones most. As you explained it, “I like them mewling and puking in my arms!”

I recall all the abandoned baby animals you brought into our lives: a mole, a magpie, numerous baby rabbits, once a puppy held up in a cattle sales ring and tossed up to you in the third row, tiny yellow kittens and the best of all–Zippy, the tiny raccoon found in its nest after hunters killed its mother.

So it is you I see in me as I remember the wild cat from the redwoods shyly watching, then lured by food, who moved into my jewelry studio and gave birth, leaving us with three tiny blue Burmese kittens. And I count on my fingers eleven different puppies and six kittens  adopted in the past 25 years since moving to Mexico–found in the street, by the lake, dumped in a cardboard box beside my garage.  Is it you, father, delivering these tiny lost ones to me, knowing the you in me that has as much need of them as they have of me?

It was my father
guiding the wild cat to me,
three kittens within.

Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

South Dakota 1954. Zippy, our pet raccoon
Boulder Creek, CA 1987, our little kittens from the redwood forest
Mexico, 2002.Annie, my second kitten adopted in Mexico, in her favorite place. She was adopted a year or so after after Talulah, whom I had found in a basket of scarves in a shop in Tonala that she had streaked into a minute before I walked in. The owner, whose daughter was allergic, begged me to adopted her and guess what?
Mexico, 2002, Lulu teaching Annie how to climb the screen door.
After finding homes for five puppies found on the beach after the death of their mother, I found Frida trotting toward us on the busy highway. At first I thought she was a big rat. Cars were speeding by. Of course, she came home with me.
First there was Frida, then Diego.
For the fifteen or more years Frida lived with me, this is where she was most of the time, checking out the neighborhood and occasionally barking at someone who didn’t belong there.
Then Morrie, abandoned by a houseguest, joined the menagerie..
Morrie got the closet door open and attacked 36 rolls of toilet paper!!!
One day I came out to find this tiny kitten standing up to Annie to steal her meal. I opened the garage door to find two more climbing the bougainville vine and another in a box.
Since I’d fed a number of stray cats over the years, it may be that the mother cat brought these kittens to my house hoping I’d feed them as I’d fed her a few times, but the presence of this box makes me think someone dropped them off.
Ollie, runt of the litter of 4.
And so, four more kittens to join my adult cat Annie.
When Frida died, I had a sculpture of her installed on the roof dome.
And Frida’s ashes went into this effigy which we concreted in place on her favorite place on the dome, to watch for as long as I have any say in the matter.
These things are never really planned, but shortly after Frida’s death, I found Zoë on a beach north of La Manzanilla.This was the first time I ever held Zoe.
And strangely enought, Ollie, once runt of the litter and now the largest and only male cat, became Zoë’s Mom.
At home, the older dogs and Zoe are not exactly siblings yet.
Then sadly, Diego passed away and the day after, I was introduced to Coco, rescued from the streets of Guadalajara, and you might not be surprised to discover she joined our family. I was egged on to adopt her by my visiting nephew and his friend.
And the terrible duo was begun!!!
As new real puppies joined the family, I installed a gate to keep less experienced little feet off the dome, but inevitably, guests or Pasiano would leave the gate on the stairs up to the casita whose terrace adjoined the dome.
Neighbors snapped this photo, then called to advise me that Frida had visitors.
Our count is now at three dogs and two cats. One or other of the cats often lords it over the dogs from a safe place. The End.

For dVerse Poets

Happy Fathers Day, Dad. xooxxo June 15, 2025

6 Replies
Yolanda’s husband Pablo died last year so today I took her family for comida at the restaurant on the libramiento overlooking Jocotepec.  I’d never been there and the food wasn’t the best, but the company was.  Yolanda, Oscar, Yoli, Juan Pablo and his wife Emmie and their 3-year-old Santiago. He had a great time playing with his cars and crawling under the table and mugging for the camera. Turns out he loves having his picture taken.  On the way home, I let them off at Pablo’s relatives’ house and drove on back to my house, but enroute I became suffused with nostalgia and memories of my dad and so had to publish this tribute to him that I published many years before:

When he wasn't ranching or farming or drinking coffee in Mack's Cafe, this is where my father could normally be found.

When he wasn’t ranching or farming or drinking coffee in Mack’s Cafe, this is where my father could normally be found. When he died, the only thing my young nephew wanted of his was these disreputable boots, which my nephew wore until the soles flapped. They are the only pair of work boots I ever remember my father wearing–wrinkled into creases by repeated wettings and dryings and pullings off and on.

Jump

Once the grass had grown waist-high,
some summer nights, my dad and I
accompanied by the shake and rattle
of his old truck, would go watch cattle.
In the twilight, barely light,
but not yet turning into night,
he’d drive the pickup over bumps
of gravel, rocks, and grassy clumps,
over dam grades, then he’d wait
as I opened each new gate,
and stretched the wire to wedge it closed,
as the cattle slowly nosed
nearer to see who we were,
curious and curiouser.

We’d park upon some grassy spot
where a herd of cattle was not,
open the doors to catch a breeze,
and I’d tell stories, and dad would tease
until at last the cattle came,
and dad would tell me each one’s name:
Bessie, Hazel, Hortense, Stella,
Annie, Rama, Bonnie, Bella.
Razzle-dazzle, Jumpin’ Jane.
Each new name grew more inane.
Yet I believed he knew them all,
and as they gathered, they formed a wall
that grew closer every minute
to that pickup with us in it.

Finally, with darkness falling,
and the night birds gently calling,
with cows so near they almost touched
the fender of the truck, Dad clutched
the light knob and then pulled it back
as the cows––the whole bunched pack
jumped back en masse with startled eyes
due to the headlights’ rude surprise.
Then he’d flick them off again,
with a chuckle and devilish grin.
As the cattle edged up once more—
the whole herd, curious to the core—
again, my dad would stage his fun.
Again, they’d jump back, every one.

He might do this three times or four,
then leave the lights on, close his door,
and gun the engine to drive on home
as stars lit up the heavenly dome
that cupped the prairie like a hand,
leaving the cattle to low and stand
empty in the summer nights
to reminisce about those lights—
miraculous to their curious eyes.
Each time a wondrous surprise.

Life was simpler way back then
and magical those evenings when
after his long day’s work was done,
laboring in the dust and sun,
after supper, tired and weary,
muscles sore and eyes gone bleary,
still when I would beg him to
do what we both loved to do,
he’d heave himself from rocking chair,
toss straw hat over thinning hair,
and make off for the pickup truck,
me giving thanks for my night’s luck.
These were the finest times I had––
these foolish nights spent with my dad.

Prescient

15 Replies

When he wasn’t ranching or farming or drinking coffee in Mack’s Cafe, this is where my father could normally be found, reading or napping. Here he is dreaming his own dream. Hopefully a happy one.

Prescient

My prescient experiences happened long ago,
shedding vivid spotlights on events I could not know.
Sporadic and unplanned-for, they came to me at night,
employing dreams to bring future happenings to light.

Once, thick in dreams, I woke to the ringing of the phone
and got up to answer its insistent tone.
“Miss Dykstra, this is Ludwig’s. You can come pick up your prints!”
Ready two days early? It didn’t make much sense.

 I said I’d be there shortly, but then went back to bed,
hoping to fall back to sleep, but, alas, instead,
the phone began to ring again, so I got out of bed,
“Miss Dykstra? We are calling to say your dad is dead!”

In shock, I dropped the receiver, and as it hit the floor,
it began to ring again. How could it have rung more?
Puzzled, I woke up in bed. The whole time I’d been sleeping!
So I got up in the real world to stem the phone’s loud beeping.

“Miss Dykstra? This is Ludwigs.”  The voice was calm and steady.
“We just called to say that your color prints are ready!” 
That summer morning, a cold chill rendered me unsteady.
Again, I though it should have been two days ’til they were ready!

I drove uptown to get my prints and when I got back home,
I could hear the ringing of my telephone.
I struggled then with key in lock, but the ringing died
before I even managed to get myself inside.

I couldn’t tell who called me, for I had no means
in those days before cellphones or answering machines.
I went into the bathroom to draw myself a bath.
It would take some soaking to dispel the aftermath

of these weird occurrences. A good half hour or more
had passed before I heard the opening of my kitchen door.
It was my Mom and Sister, both of them in tears.
My dad had had a heart attack, echoing my fears.

In time, it was the end of him, though he lived four more years—
a time in which he had to learn how to shift his gears.
A large man, hale and hearty, and active his whole life,
for those four years he had to depend upon his wife

to open doors and lift things heavier than a phone,
belligerently accepting help for things once done alone. 
“We tried to call you earlier, they said. Where did you go?
I’d had two calls to pick up photos, and so I told them so.”

 

This really did happen, exactly as described. Two sets of phone calls, the words exactly the same in the first set—one a dream, the other reality, although in the second set, I received only the first one in a dream  and when I missed the second phonecall, my sister had to deliver the message herself.

Word prompts today are thick, sporadic, prescient, employ, summer and bellligerent.

Winter Provisioning

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Winter Provisioning

The cows are in the pasture, plump but in the nude,
watching for their daily hay bales to be renewed.
My prestigious assignment is to drive the truck
while Daddy tips the hay bales off, for he has all the luck!
The cows think he’s their savior while I’m just the chauffeur.
So though my appearance does not cause a stir,
when they see his welcome face, they speed by in a blur
to break into the hay bales that my dad has spread,
and that is how in winter, daily, our cows are fed!!!

 

Prompts today are plump, renew, prestigious, watch, assignment and pasture. Image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.

Country Boy

11 Replies


Country Boy
Hair wild as a hedgehog, my kid brother Benny
spins over the landscape just like a lost penny.
Brown as a gingersnap baked by the sun,
he cannot be stopped ‘til he wants to be done.
No iced tea can lure him, for he’d rather sip
from a cold rushing river and then take a dip,
roll in the tall grass until he is dry,
then turn on his back to look up at the sky
at eagles and swallows and dragonfly wings
and flop over again to watch earthier things.
No hearthstone can rival the lure of outside.
He will jump on his pony and take a long ride
to fill up his day with natural pleasures,
stuffing his saddlebag with priceless treasures––
arrowheads, fossils and bottles whose glass
has turned purple from years in the sun and the grass.
Who can explain a country boy’s mind?
Such pleasures cannot be explained or defined.
Just leave him alone, for there’ll be time enough
to smooth all those edges the world may call rough.
For now, he’s a nature boy, unique and wild,
giving birth to the man that will grow from the child.

 

Christine Goodnough sent me the above prompt words and since I’m incapable of turning down a challenge, this was the result. The poem didn’t start out being about my dad but somewhere in the middle, I realized perhaps it was. This is a photo of him at age 13 on the homestead that he grew up on. He moved into town when he married my mom, but farmed and ranched the homestead plus land he later acquired until he sold the ranch after I graduated from high school.

 

 

 

Shelter: Portrait for Weekend Mini Challenge

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In front of Murdo Drug Store.

Shelter

On the prairies of Dakota, 
weather often came with exclamation marks.
My father’s forehead was ringed like an old tree,
white from above his eyebrows to his fast-retreating hairline,
from his hat pulled low to guard from every vagary of weather.
“It’s hot as the hubs of Hell!” he’d exclaim as he sank into his chair at noon,
sweeping his hat from his head to mop his brow.
A nap after lunch, then Mack’s Cafe for coffee with his friends,
then back to work in the field until dark, some days.

“Cold as a witch’s teat in January!” was as close to swearing 
as I ever heard my dad get, November through March,
stomping the snow off rubber
overboots in the garage, tracking snow from his cuffs through the mudroom/laundry.
Cold curled like Medusa’s ringlets off his body.
We learned to avoid his hands,
red with winter, nearly frozen inside his buckskin gloves.

His broad-brimmed hat, steaming near the fireplace
as we gathered around the big formica table in the dining room.
Huge beef roasts from our own cattle, mashed potatoes and green beans.
Always a lettuce salad and dessert. The noon meal was “dinner”—
main meal of the day.
Necessary for a farmer/rancher who had a full day’s work still ahead of him.

Our weather was announced by our father
with more color than the radio weather report.
Spring was declared by his, “Raining cats and dogs out there!”
Only now have I really thought about how we were protected
from the vagaries of weather as from so much else.
It was a though my father bore the brunt of all of it, facing it
for us, easing our way. It was his job.

We were sheltered, all of us,
from those extremes of that land I didn’t even know was harsh
until years later, living in milder climates,
remembering the poetry
of how a man who really lived in it
gave us hints of its reality.

 

This is an extensive rewrite of a poem published earlier this year, redone for a prompt given by the weekend mini challenge  to create a portrait with words that is based on a photograph or painting of a person.

Predisposed to Erudition

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Predisposed to Erudition

Central to dad’s disposition
was his need for exposition.
Topics such as  soil condition,
family stories, nuclear fission,
required a bit of erudition.
And every tale’s newest edition
had its own unique rendition.

 

Today’s prompt word was disposition. Here is the link:
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/09/your-daily-word-prompt-disposition-may-9-2019/

Dakota Dirt

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Dakota Dirt

My father toiled for fifty years,
facing the worries and the fears—
the gambles that a farmer faced
when all his future he had placed
as seeds beneath Dakota dirt.
Every year, he risked the shirt
right off his back. With faith, he’d bury
his whole future in that prairie.
Sticky gumbo, that fine-grained silt
upon which his whole life was built.
Then, closer to our summer home,
near the river, in sand and loam,
he hoped he could prepare for ours:
our clothes, our college, and first cars.

Then came those years that brought the change
that altered fields and crops and range.
The rain that formerly turned to rust
plows left untended, turned to dust
that, caught up in the wind’s mad thrust
caused many a farmer to go bust
as a whole nation mourned and cussed
black clouds of dirt that broke the trust
that nature would provide for all.
What formerly fed, now brought their fall.

It broke the men who couldn’t wait
for the drought years to abate,
but my father kept his faith in soil.
Found other paying forms of toil
building dams to catch what rain
might later fall on that dry plain.
And though others thought his prospects poor,
he kept his land and bought some more.
He learned to vary furrow line,
believing it would turn out fine.

So when good fortune returned again,
bringing with it snow and rain,
he welcomed and was ready for it.
That April it began to pour, it
filled his dams and nourished what
soil remained. He filled each rut
with clover, alfalfa and wheat.
Allowed the summer sun to beat
and change them into fields of gold—
into grain and feed he sold.

Bought cattle. Planted winter wheat.
Once more secure on his two feet,
expanded and as he had planned,
bought more cattle and more land.
Some said that he had just exploited
those whose land he’d reconnoitered
and purchased after they’d given up,
empty hands transformed to cup.
He was a hero unsung, unknown,
until long after when I was grown.

At the centennial of our town,
I learned a bit of his renown
when others told to me how he
shared nature’s generosity.
He sent three daughters to university,
then shared with his community 
to build a church and give more knowledge
to those young men he sent to college.
Then made loans without fame or thanks
to other farmers denied by banks.

I’d always known how rich my life
was made by all his toil and strife—
the insurance he gave his family
that enabled us all to be free.
But, aside from daughters, wife and mother,
I’d never know of every other
soul he’d helped  to prosperous ends:
neighboring ranchers, sons of friends.
Could my father have known he’d also planned
all these other futures when he bought the land?

 

This rich Jones County gumbo on the treads of my tire at one of our all-town reunions a few years ago is what sent me to college!

Not enough dirt for you?  Check out this story: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/01/26/south-dakota-gumbo/

The prompt today was soil.

Jump

23 Replies
When he wasn't ranching or farming or drinking coffee in Mack's Cafe, this is where my father could normally be found.

When he wasn’t ranching or farming or drinking coffee in Mack’s Cafe, this is where my father could normally be found. When he died, the only thing my young nephew wanted of his was these disreputable boots, which my nephew wore until the soles flapped. They are the only pair of work boots I ever remember my father wearing–wrinkled into creases by repeated wettings and dryings and pullings off and on.

Jump

Once the grass had grown waist-high,
some summer nights, my dad and I
accompanied by the shake and rattle
of his old truck, would go watch cattle.
In the twilight, barely light,
but not yet turning into night,
he’d drive the pickup over bumps
of gravel, rocks, and grassy clumps,
over dam grades, then he’d wait
as I opened each new gate,
and stretched the wire to wedge it closed,
as the cattle slowly nosed
nearer to see who we were,
curious and curiouser.

We’d park upon some grassy spot
where a herd of cattle was not,
open the doors to catch a breeze,
and I’d tell stories, and dad would tease
until at last the cattle came,
and dad would tell me each one’s name:
Bessie, Hazel, Hortense, Stella,
Annie, Rama, Bonnie, Bella.
Razzle-dazzle, Jumpin’ Jane.
Each new name grew more inane.
Yet I believed he knew them all,
and as they gathered, they formed a wall
that grew closer every minute
to that pickup with us in it.

Finally, with darkness falling,
and the night birds gently calling,
with cows so near they almost touched
the fender of the truck, Dad clutched
the light knob and then pulled it back
as the cows––the whole bunched pack
jumped back en masse with startled eyes
due to the headlights’ rude surprise.
Then he’d flick them off again,
with a chuckle and devilish grin.
As the cattle edged up once more—
the whole herd, curious to the core—
again, my dad would stage his fun.
Again, they’d jump back, every one.

He might do this three times or four,
then leave the lights on, close his door,
and gun the engine to drive on home
as stars lit up the heavenly dome
that cupped the prairie like a hand,
leaving the cattle to low and stand
empty in the summer nights
to reminisce about those lights—
miraculous to their curious eyes.
Each time a wondrous surprise.

Life was simpler way back then
and magical those evenings when
after his long day’s work was done,
laboring in the dust and sun,
after supper, tired and weary,
muscles sore and eyes gone bleary,
still when I would beg him to
do what we both loved to do,
he’d heave himself from rocking chair,
toss straw hat over thinning hair,
and make off for the pickup truck,
me giving thanks for my night’s luck.
These were the finest times I had––
these foolish nights spent with my dad.

The prompt word today is “jump.”