My Father Toured the South

My father and his muscles
toured the South posing
in store windows stripped down
past the biceps. He was young then,
dark eyes like dates, hair
like a black sand bar. Full of rush
he was to crush cities and worlds
like the air he shushed off
when he brought the loose strap up
round his chest and inhaled
till he filled it, proving
the power of physical culture.

When I was nine and he full in the forties
I found his pictures, profiled in tights
like a small John L. He laughed
when I showed them and with a thumb
in his mouth blew up his arm
like an auto tire we tried
to squeeze down and couldn’t.

At seventy that proud and laughing strength
folds into a memory of music, store windows
and crowds of puny watchers, of caught oh’s
from his children’s lips as he hefted
us up to the ceiling and swung us back
like easy dumbbells. His stomach
muscles flap against his belt, his arms
are half-caste traitors to a wish.

Now, no more weights to lift,
nothing his youth need move by muscle,
no cities to push flat for the sake
of proving strength. Only the muscles in his head
still flex and dance as his arms did once
in that old thumb game and the strap
across his brain pulls tight again and again.