This brilliantly crafted and moving poem is a tightly condensed personal story that is simultaneously an expansive universal lesson on relationship, healing, and love.
Washing the Car with My Father, by Afaa Michael Weaver
There are so many things to admire about this poem—the most obvious is the way it begins and ends with a common yet specific object that the poet infuses with meaning through the first stanza. The poem effortlessly creates images that prime the reader. We think we know what the story is about, until we suddenly learn that our understanding is only the foundation for the actual story—one of relational bonds strained but not broken, of survival and healing, of vulnerability and understanding.
There are also the details of craft. The choice of twilight to describe the shade of blue foreshadows and then references end of life for the father. The second stanza is packed with alliterative phrasing—my favorite is “naming mentors the men who pack guns.” The third stanza repeats the word blood four times before we are abruptly introduced to a perpetrator who is a relative not by blood but by marriage.
The poet chooses to break for the final stanza not where there is a gap in time as might be expected (“Years later…”), but where there is a shift in the story and a transformative experience (“he wipes a tear…”). The poem doesn’t elaborate on whether or not the two ever spoke further about the son’s victimization and how that childhood trauma impacted his life. It simply ends where it began, with a nostalgic memory that affirms a palliative bond between father and son.
Beautiful.
Love,
M
Learn more about Afaa Michael Weaver.