Greg McBride: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sizes

 

My sister found our father’s ring,

turquoise faded, sullied silver-plate.

 

It stopped my breath. Thirty years ago

I took it from his cold hand.

 

A big man, he never took it off,

not when he dug or swung or swam,

 

or smeared on huckleberry jam,

or held a cribbage peg, or gripped

 

a favorite pitching wedge, then fudged

his score again. With feeling,

 

she placed it on my palm,

we his keepers. I slipped it on.

 

It hung, slack, wanting more.

It stung. Once, the shoes. Now this.

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Greg McBride spent a year as an Army photographer in Vietnam, then thirty years practicing law in Washington, DC, before discovering contemporary poetry in his fifties. It changed his life. In 2005 he became founding editor of the Innisfree Poetry Journal. At the age of 63, he won the Boulevard emerging poet prize. His book Porthole won the Liam Rector First Book Prize. ["Sizes" first appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review.]

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Mickey McBride and his son Greg, ca. 1984.

Comments

[S. Campbell]

Terrific poem!

[lally]

brilliantly crafted poem, excellent!

[David Salner]

Charged with emotion, so skillfully rendered

[Emily Fragos]

Tremendous poem. Not a wasted, unnecessary word. I especially love the litany of the dad's doings--a life vividly captured. It is a poem that avoids simplistic sentimentality, always a trap in parent poems. I enjoyed the warm photo of the poet and his father, too.

[Eileen]

Beautiful poem. Very tender.

[Bruce Wallace]

I love this poem. So poignantly evocative in so few words. Congratulations on a great honor. Dubs

[gracecavalieri]

I'd call this poem a diamond, but a diamond is not a living thing and this is

[Alice Mayer Wenger]

Made my heart skip a beat.

[Anne Harding Woodworth]

Greg, what a moving poem about a father-son relationship. I’m sure you still have the ring, stored in a safe place and brought out every now and then. It is a symbol of so much. You’re lucky to have it. Thanks for the poem.

[Eamonn Wall]

Wonderful poem.

[David Lehman]

I echo the warm-hearted comments, and compliment Grace Cavalieri for her beautiful formulation. Is Mr McBride still with us? The past tense makes me think otherwise, but one can always hope.

[Peter Kearney]

It seems it was the passing of 30 years that made the clustering of memories so poignant.

[Clarinda]

Beautiful. The sense of being unable to fill his fathers ring says everything. Wow.

[Greg McBride]

I write, first, to assure David that I am indeed still among you and fully expect to be for many years to come. Also to thank all these readers who have warmed my heart with their receptions to this little poem. It seemed a trifle to me as I began, but found its way in short order. Speaking of which, he was 5'6" but he always seemed huge to me. My father was quite a character. I've written other poems about him, and prose as well. One point of interest is that over the years he wrote hundreds of humorous, end-rhymed poems, which he sent off to the various women he knew throughout his life, including back to grammar school in American Falls, Idaho, where he and his ten siblings were born and raised.

Special thanks to Terence Winch for including me in this wonderful series of fine poems.
Best wishes to all. Greg

[Terence Winch]

Greg---Thanks for this excellent footnote to the poem.

[David Lehman]

Thank you, Greg, for replying in the affirmative! Kudos on the poem and its enthusiastic reception by our readers. Terence's taste is incomparable. Onward!

[Maureen]

On the mark!

[Gerald Fleming]

Terse, tactile, the heft of the thing felt in my own hand.

[George Moore]

Nice poem here Greg. A sense of the inner sense, and that never-lost connection.