My Father Watched Westerns

He couldn’t get enough of them: those dusty
landscapes on the other side of the screen,
men on horses seeking justice or revenge.
All through my life if he was tired I would

find him in a dark room full of gunfire.
His movie titles included words like Lone
and Lonesome though mostly families
stuck together and young men learned

to risk their lives for whatever was noble
or right. I could not sit through them;
women were left behind in saloons
with hair and dresses as soft as pillows,

their possibilities perfumed by estrogen.
But it was the men my father was watching.
They had wide hats and leather boots,
masks made of betrayal. My father

remembered the dangerous people
he faced in courtrooms, his arguments
like bullets. His mind was full of places
that were not yet settled, places where

law was new. A man had a horse, a few
friends, some deep internal compass.
People relied on him; what he needed most
was courage. My father related to this.
He knew, after all, how the west was won.

 

Faith Shearin, Moving the Piano (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2011)