AMERICAN DREAMS

AMERICAN DREAMS


I had to stare at something besides my coffee
something told me.  And there was flashing money:
a quarter and a dime left for the waitress
were shining big as planets over Texas
on a napkin.  I had to hear this story
she told the truckers, about her penniless father

who'd rented a trailer outside Austin.  Her father
migrated south of trees where, black as coffee,
treasures bubbled— or so he'd got the story
on a spree— these lakes of oil, pools of money
under the whole unpromising stretch of Texas.
He'd blown his stake.  Then, he married a waitress

who passed this to her daughter, the way this waitress
slid out eggs.  She pocketed tips for her father's
marker and mailed change weekly down to Texas.
I had to listen to something besides the coffee
sizzle in its pot or the register ringing money.
Nothing stopped me hearing another story

I told myself.  It haunted me like stories
heard when five; that someone was always waiting
in diners, watching me, not plates, his money
dwindling, but still alive.  I knew my father
was in that booth.  With two men, gulping coffee,
he was hunched.  He'd been invited to Texas

by men in bone-white hats who claimed, In Texas
nothing grows but cactus.  They're green as stories
your fathers believed, as twenties.  He sipped coffee,
rattled tall tales, off the cuff, to the waitress,
and spoke of checks in dry hands.  Why was father
talkative in this diner?  I fumbled for money,

his wallet I'd picked for years.  I held the money,
while men in dazzling boots were offering Texas
and fossils (they didn't promise trees).  My father
wanted gold.  His knack for telling stories
half-believed, he'd willed to me.  Our waitress
filled bottomless cups until they gushed with coffee.

And the old man finished coffee, lost for money,
and swore he'd mail the waitress cash from Texas.
Stories are spent; and what can I lend father?


Jack Hayes
© 2010

This poem originally appeared in Timbuktu


[Photo of the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas taken on a cross-country road trip that originated in Charlottesville; but the poem pre-dates this!]