Martinis
          
 
Last time we ate together,
my father tried to steal my martini.
A son can’t slap a father’s hand away,
no matter what the doctor said
about the medication for his seizures.
 
He smiled, implored, begged, and I
begged with him, complicit, recalling
memories he told too often as he aged,
of honky-tonks and poker games,
New Orleans and gin soaked dives,
when he hauled rigs and slept in cabs,
living hard before our mother set him straight;
recalling a trip to Ensenada when he and a family friend
locked themselves inside a trailer
parked near where we had body-surfed that day,
refusing to come out until they found
the recipe for the perfect martini;
recalling the margaritas he mixed
with juice from his own lemon tree
and my new wife, trying to be helpful
in the strange house of her new in-laws,
tossing that murky thawing fluid
down the drain and scrubbing the pitcher clean,
and how he negotiated his disappointment
into dry martinis graced with lemon twists.
 
Last time we ate together, we negotiated a silent contract,
settled on a sip to reconstruct fragments from the past.
But his fingers wrapped so tight around the glass,
it took  all my subtle strength to pry them loose
without shattering the communion that we shared.