"Fork On Broken Twig" - John Findura

My father is the kind of guy who sees Bill Cosby do a stand-up routine and comes home absolutely positive that he could do that just as well. He is also the kind of guy that gets asked to leave the White House tour by the Secret Service because he tries to sneak a picture out the window by the Rose Garden. That was an exciting trip. “Hey John, what’d you do over summer vacation?” “Eh, nothing. Oh, wait, yeah, except for watching my dad get interrogated by the FBI over camera usage in the White House.”

 

He was a middle school teacher for 36 years before he retired and decided to focus on photography, which he’s been doing professionally for years. He also likes to quote things like “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence” (Ansel Adams) and “One photograph out of focus is a mistake, ten photos out of focus are an experimentation, one hundred photos out of focus are a style” (Unknown).

 

Poetry was a completely new thing to him, and when I stated I was going to be a poet he was very confused. It appears the last book he read was in college, a text on speed-reading that he never finished, so what I was doing was waaay outside of anything he had encountered. The first time he went to a reading I did he went with my mother and one of my brothers. Luckily, I was in a separate car on the way home so I didn’t have to hear him ask question after question about what he had just experienced. “Nothing made sense!” “It was like they were trying to confuse us on purpose!”

 

Now let’s keep in mind this fact: my father cannot recount the plot of any Broadway show he’s ever seen because he spends the entire production watching the stage hands walk across the catwalks above the stage and wondering what the hell they’re doing up there.

But during the ride home he decides that he, too, can write poetry. He decides that he will write a poem called “Fork On Broken Twig” after a series of photos he wanted to do consisting of pictures of a fork on various broken twigs. He insists that those are the only types on photos that ever win any contests: pictures of things where they’re not supposed to be, such as an old shoe in a stream, or a dog wearing a watch.

 

So he wrote up “Fork On Broken Twig.” It contains lines like

 

Gained through the knowledge of soulful partners

Acting troubled and searching over again, but not often alone

Dancing, around and around and around again

In control once again, in control, like a fork on a broken twig

 

“What the hell does that mean?” I asked.

“It’s a poem.”

“I know, but I don’t know what you’re going for in it.”

“It makes as much sense as any of the poems I heard the other night.”

 

Aha, I thought. So I explained that even if a poem appeared to be about nothing, in reality, it should sort of be about something. At least most of the time. I explained a few of my poems, such as “Things I Don’t Like Talking About,” (thanks Copper Nickel!) which is indeed about things that I don’t like talking about. I gave him the reason behind “Poor Tessa, The Tractor Girl,” which was in fact inspired by a poor girl named Tessa who drove a tractor. While I don’t believe that a poem needs to be about something, I think it helps if the poet has an idea of what they want to do with the poem and not just stick a bunch of words together.

 

My father also loves to tell stories, because odd things always seem to happen to him (see the Secret Service incident above). A few years ago he and my mother went with my aunt and uncle on vacation to Niagara Falls, and from there were going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. While in Niagara Falls, as my father likes to tell it, he was amazed to see so many Amish people. Who knew Niagara Falls was a hot vacation destination for Mennonites? Being up on Amish culture from having watched Witness (starring Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis) sometimes in the 1980s, my father was vaguely aware that if he took a picture of them he would steal their soul (or something, he wasn’t quite sure, but he knew it was probably bad).

 

Instead of letting the Amish people enjoy their vacation by taking a ride on the Maid of the Mist, my father decided to sneak a few quick pictures because he couldn’t get over the sight of a young Amish girl wearing a bonnet underneath her official Maid of the Mist raincoat. So he stealthily removed the cap from his camera, held it by his hip, and snapped a picture of her. Mission accomplished.

 

A week-and-a-half later while driving through Ohio, my parents and aunt and uncle stopped at a random roadside Amish store selling traditional Amish things along with Moon-Pies (banana moon pie = delicious!) and various Coke/Pepsi products just to get a quick snack. When they went to the cashier, my father did a double-take: the cashier was the Amish girl whose soul he had stolen in Niagara Falls! He ran out to the car and checked his camera. Yep, it certainly was the girl. So ran back in and walked back up to the counter. In his closest approximation of a normal speaking voice (36 years teaching Phys Ed has left him unable to maintain a conversation at a rational decibel level and took away his ability to whisper) asked if she happened to have been in Niagara Falls recently. The girl almost fell over.

 

My mother had to explain to her how they had been surprised to see such a large group of Amish people in Niagara Falls and had remembered her because she struck them as being so beautiful. They then talked about what it was like living in an Amish community and how it’s not really anything like the movie Witness, and that her name was Karen.

 

Well, that would have been the end of the story until my father reflected back to it while thinking about what I had said about poetry. He sat down at his computer and willed a poem into existence from deep inside of him. The next day, he called and said I had to come over the house to read his poem. I asked him to email it to me. He said I had to hear it. I said to read it over the phone. He said I had to hear it in person. So I drove over, where I was presented with this:

 

Karen

by John R. Findura, Sr.

 

The line moved slowly

The sun, soft voice

Smile, white bonnet

 

Standing near, away

The shutter clicked

No one noticed

 

Onward and forgotten

Crafts, quilts, and jam

The cash drawer closing

 

A soft voice, the smile

The bonnet still in place

 

I asked him to read it again. It seemed like an honest to God real poem. There were a few word choices I wouldn’t have used, but I liked how the phrase “soft voice,” while a little cliché, was first used at the end of a line, and later was used at the beginning of another line, and how the word “smile” followed suit. I liked how the first stanza used the repetitive “s” sound. And best of all, how the final two lines wrap the whole thing up by returning to the bonnet.

 

I read it again. It wasn’t the best thing I had ever read, but for someone who had never read a poem before my first published piece, this was a giant step. A tremendous step. It was someone making an attempt to step out of the box he’d spent his entire life in and try to understand an art form that was completely foreign to him. It doesn’t matter if the poem was good or not, but after his first attempt at “Fork on Broken Twig” he could have just given up and said “Hey, my son is into this and I gave it a try.” But he didn’t give up. In fact he tried harder. He may never be a “poet” and he doesn’t really want to be, anymore than he wanted to be a dancer when he danced in the parent’s competition at my sister’s dance school when she was a kid. I’m sure my mother had no hopes of pitching in Yankee Stadium when she would play catch with me when I was eight, but knowing my mother, I wouldn’t exactly be surprised if she did.

 

So, kids and parents, take note: it’s not always the destination that’s important, it’s the journey. Whatever that journey happens to be. Enjoy it.