Fathers

Janelle Curlin-Taylor

July 28, 2024

In 1947 my mother purchased 

Favorite Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A newly illustrated edition.

“The Village Blacksmith” was our favorite.

Our father was the village blacksmith

In our small town up on the Cap Rock

In the Texas Panhandle.

In 1962, I found myself in Cambridge, MA

In Longfellow's world

Working for an architect in a small house

With hand hewn floor boards

Wider than the reach of my small hands.

General Washington had housed

Some of his troop there during the Revolutionary War.

Out the side window, Gropius in his last architectural office and 

The first Design Research store in America.

Out the front window, a great view of that

Spreading Chestnut tree of Longfellow's poem.

Synchronicity?  Perhaps.

Blacksmith shops and Mid-Century Modern

Bookends of my early life.

George Washington, the Father of our country

Longfellow, one of the Fathers of 19th Century American literature

William Ellery Channing, Father of the American Unitarian movement

My passion for the New England Transcendentalists 

Giving me the nickname “Channing Christian.” 

Gropius, Father of Mid-Century Modern.

So many Fathers.

My biological father: extroverted, loving, 

Overflowing with compassion

For teens, old folks, misfits.

Would he have been at home in that Lexington-Cambridge

Culture I found so exciting?  Probably not.

Perhaps all those fathers are fleshing out 

The "Father” in my life.

Janelle Curlin-Taylor, a Texas poet living in Tennessee, inherited
the poetry gene from her grandfather and her mother. Published in
various Texas journals and anthologies, she is grateful for Texas Poetry
Assignment for keeping Texas and poetry close.  She is married to
California poet, Jeffrey Taylor.