“At A Camp In Forest County” — a poem by Fred Shaw

June 19th, 2021

The cover to Horace Silver’s 1965 Blue Note album Song For My Father

___

At A Camp In Forest County

I’ll first catch “Song for My Father”
as Steely Dan churning in a tape deck between
the thin walls of this two-room cabin, biting
what I’ll later come to dig–Horace Silver’s opening bass notes,

the piano vamp and a Joe Henderson solo, phrasing
that sounds more like a blossoming.
What began there, I’ll come to know
as Dad’s mid-life fade, wrapping itself

in the echoing call of a hermit thrush,
an acorn dropping a rimshot on the steel roof,
his empty beers clinking on the glue-stained Formica
where I’ll build plastic models of hot-rods.

Now, pushing fifty, I’m starting to hear
the track’s clave rhythm and staccato fills
as the clipped replies of a man who made
promises by night he’d never keep,

yet’d nudge his son awake each school morning,
smelling of Speed-Stick and his first
cigarette of the day, guzzling instant coffee
before pulling the front door closed behind him.

Back then, I couldn’t know I’ll someday be fatherless
and without child, or that the bop-man’s biggest hit
will come to fill my ears with what sounds like
equal parts anthem and lament.

___

Fred Shaw was named Emerging Poet Laureate Finalist for Allegheny County in 2020. He is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, and Carlow University, where he received his MFA. He teaches writing and literature at Point Park University and Carlow University. His first collection, Scraping Away, was recently published by CavanKerry Press. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and rescued hound dogs.

Listen to the 1965 recording of Horace Silver playing “Song For My Father,” with Joe Henderson (tenor saxophone); Carmell Jones (trumpet); Teddy Smith (bass); and Roger Humphries (drums).