George Anderson- Dreaming of Jonny Cash

Dreaming Of Johnny Cash

Ronald- father- 

wherever thou art

why are you still appearing in my dreams?

you’ve been dead now for twelve years!

 

I remember that last time I saw you- 

at Kentville Hospital

hot-wired to an oxygen bag 

you gasping, grasping 

for each hard-earned breath

you wanted it all to end  

but they kept re-reviving you

inserting a catheter into your oesophagus - 

you reliving your imminent death countless times

your lungs choked from years of smoking 

& foundry work

& that night they snatched you

from that Amtrak train in Springfield

your lungs brimming with Canadian Club chunder.

 

*

 

We had a reunion of sorts

back in Aylesford in the family home

a few weeks before you died-

you hooked up to an oxygen machine

near the back porch 

us thirty-something kids upstairs

playing, not so cynically this time, 

your Johnny Horton and Johnny Cash records-

toking away & madly cackling. 

 

Later in the night

I went down for a piss

& asked if you were OK

you gesturing in a hyperbolic manner 

to turn the outside lights off.

 

*

 

I’m sorry dad

I switched off the double adaptor

attached to your oxygen machine

it was an accident- honest-

I can still imagine you sputtering

getting up in the dead of night

cursing, 

flicking

the machine back on.

 

I remember that last day in Canada

at Kentville Hospital

I kissed you reluctantly as I left 

to catch my flight,

the hard stubble of your beard

still brushing in my mind.

as I write now.

In the lift down

a nurse noticed me gagging,

stifling the torment

& spoilingly attempted to comfort me,

diverting me from that harrowing

but redemptive glimpse

into the finality of all things.

*

Ronald-father

the other night

I dreamt you were living with me in Oz 

you sat at the table

closely reading the stock market pages

with your conical magnifying glass

& drinking a bottle of Coopers Sparkling Ale-

I’d just returned from the beach

I asked whether you had heard Johnny Cash’s

Folsom Prison Blues was out on Blue Ray CD.

You told me bluntly, ‘I saw it lying on the coffee table 

but I couldn’t get the goddamn machine to work.’

 

As I struggled to buckle up my pants 

around my upper chest 

I remembered with a wry smile

that you were dead.

Note

'Dreaming of Jonny Cash' is a tribute to my Old Man. It is one of the first poems I ever wrote and it appeared in the e-zine Megaera #21, March 2005. The title is borrowed from Grant Caldwell's excellent poetry collection Dreaming of Robert De Niro (Five Island Press, 2003) which I was reading at the time.

Bold Monkey Review will publish more of my uncollected and unpublished poems in the coming weeks and months.