Tightie
by Boyd Bauman

The game was simple.
Dad was not of the generation,
gender, or genetics of huggers,
so when I was a kid,
on the occasions he could corral me
in a corner of the living room,

he’d wrap his laborer’s arms
tightly around my torso and inquire,
“Is that tight?”

The challenge dictated the answer be, “No!”
but breath and bravado weakened
in response to each increased torque,
his grip like another turn of the bench vise
in the implement shed.

The aroma of his workday outdoors
would penetrate deeply into my nasal passages,
the morning sear of the cattle-branding iron,
his afternoon in the sweet alfalfa field,
evening slog through the feedlot muck
with buckets of ground milo for the sows.

Don’t get me wrong, Dad.
I remember the constrictions
of your final years,
and my prayer is that it all dispersed:

your consciousness to some sort of communion
with the cosmos,
your atoms evolving back
into the stuff of stars,
your soul radiating
within the great light.

I’m just letting you know
I miss the mortal coil
you wrapped so tightly around
the two of us.



Originally published in The Flint Hills Review  

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