When Pa Hall Died
A poem by Martin Murfin The post When Pa Hall Died appeared first on Deep South Magazine.
Black News 
by Martin J. Murfin
When Pa Hall died
was much too far away—
No one to tell, who had known him too—
Only those that smiled somehow—
Were sorry,
Taking a moment
Perhaps,
To think of their grandpa—
When he had died,
When he might die.
When Pa Hall died,
I answered the telephone
And clicked the alarm at
Two minutes till six
When the day should have begun like any other—
Without death,
Without weak eyes searching gray hotel walls for
Memories
Better when Pa and I had remembered together—
Laughed together
And agreed that those days were the best—
Gone too fast.
When Pa Hall died
I didn’t cry—
Only pulled on jeans and a road-stained shirt.
But I sat again,
Bare feet cold on the ground–
Eyes on Pa:
……………………….And Junior—
…………………………………………..Jay
…………………………………………….Joe
……………………………………………….Jim
……………………………………………….…and me.
All of us fishing the Gulf of Mexico in that old V-hulled Thunderbird right off Fort Morgan and reeling in those Spanish and Blues too fast to count, throwing back the Skipjack because they’re just too bloody to eat. “But Skipjack put up a good fight,” Pa says and slides it through his crimping fingers and back into the blue, eager waves.
Of course he was right, like the time he took us to Greenville:
……………………….Junior—
………………………………………Jay
…………………………………………..Joe
……………………………………………..Jim
……………………………………………….…and me.
All of us shooting at dove and tromping through the weeds and standing around the thrashed-down millet field. “Bead’em six inches ahead from the side, on the butt flying from ya, on the head dead atcha,” he says, sliding another low-brass shell into that old humped-back Browning Double. –And of course he carries home twice more than us, just to make sure there’s plenty of feathers to pluck and lots of breasts to fry and pull apart and savor in all the years to come.
When Pa Hall died
I remembered Granny too—
When she had died.
How I loved her just as much,
Though neither were my real Granny and Pa—
But said I was their fourth grandson running round about—
That they loved me too
Just like
…………………………………………..Jay
…………………………………………….Joe
……………………………………………….Jim
That I must be theirs somehow—
Too bull-headed not to be—
So I was.
When Pa Hall died,
We buried him and I cried
And we carried him to the grave:
……………………….Junior—
………………………………………Jay
…………………………………………..Joe
……………………………………………….Jim
He would have done the same for …Me.
Martin Murfin lives in Silverhill, Alabama, where he enjoys writing from his perspective of the emerging South of the 1960s and ‘70s through today. He won the John Craig Stewart Fiction Award at the University of South Alabama for the short story “Close Places,” published in Mobile Bay Tales: Stories and Essays About a Region. His poem “Coming Back” appeared in Cats Magazine.
The post When Pa Hall Died appeared first on Deep South Magazine.
