Joseph Geskey

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Failing Better


Old coffee can, dipping into a stream,
trying to capture darting minnows,
my father watching, drinking beer.

Catching a few, transferring them
into a bowl when I returned home,
already planning to buy fish food

so I could prove to my parents
that I was responsible enough
one day to care for a dog.

Waking up distraught, finding
them dead, no explanation offered,
chlorinated tap water causing suffocation.

Hand on a hot stove parenting style.
Not one book in our home growing up,
dust motes on empty shelves, instead

tomes of knowledge found under the night sky
or the undercarriage of a late-model Chevy.
“College boys,” he would frequently say.

McNamara’s “Whiz Kids,” CEO’s
of financial institutions too big to fail,
book smart but lacking common sense.

The obviousness of fail better. Change
bait from night crawlers to shiners,
move locations, if your next meal is in doubt.

Last year of his life he became homebound
then increasingly bedridden before discovering
“Morphine makes dying easier.”

Finally freed from being a suburban deer
struck by a car and suffering on the road,
back in a field, the charity of a bullet.

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Chaos Theory


Stalled engine, leaking antifreeze,
pulled off the side of a highway
near midnight on a Friday in January
driving through rural Pennsylvania,
moon illuminating the landscape
like an x-ray. Two hours left
of an eight-hour drive before attending
to the busyness of a dying father.
Drawback of a life spent under
desk lamps instead of car hoods,
thinking of sending a thank you card
to the engineer who designed
the translucent coolant reservoir
for those of us who haven’t read
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to What’s Under A Car Hood.

No Proustian or Stoic-like epiphanies
while confined to a prison cell-like room,
sentenced to hard labor of breathing.
As a young boy, I wanted to catch a butterfly
flitting through a small patch of wildflowers
until my father explained pollination.
Letting it go, unsure if other butterflies
would return and contribute color
and beauty to a dying manufacturing town.
All the lawyers, doctors, nurses,
bill collectors and aides, trying to stack
sandbags on a low-lying island
before a once-in-a lifetime typhoon
strike from the flight path
a butterfly took all those years ago.

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Time to Say Goodbye

Wind-strewn and swirling yellow
Honey locust leaves litter
The street like a ticker tape
Parade, celebrating a lunch hour
Without a call from the nurses
Saying my father’s pain has worsened.
Shingles of leaves have begun
Their slow collapse off the rooftop
Of Sycamores, soon unable to protect
The winged or wingless from the elements.
Blighted backyard European Beech
And its withered, curled, leathery leaves
That once stood sentinel every summer
Providing us with an awning of shade
To linger and laugh into the night.
It’s past time to say goodbye, knowing
The charity of collecting another day
Further decimates the destitute
Who have nothing further to give.

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Banner Art:
from Mountain and Stream, Louis Lozowick, 1940