For The Old Man

I was fifteen years old on Christmas morning, 1994. That year, my dad was forty-four. Among the gifts he gave me were two books: Confessions of a Barbarian, an edited collection of Edward Abbey’s journals, and Earth Apples, a slim volume of Abbey’s poetry.

In one of those books, I found a poem Abbey wrote to his own father, Paul Revere Abbey, on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday. The moment I read it, I remember thinking: One day, when my dad turns seventy-five, I want to share this with him.

Today, thirty-one years later, is that day. I’m forty-six now. And today, my dad turns seventy-five.

All my life, my dad is the man I have tried to be like. He's the person I have most tried to impress. To make proud. And because of the kind of man he is, I’ve never lacked for a man in my life whose opinion I respect, whose advice I trust, and whose love I’ve never had to question.

Thank you, Dad—for who you are, for what you’ve given me, my brothers, our families, OUR family, and for all the ways you’ve shown up.

I love you.

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For The Old Man

by Edward Abbey

For The Old Man

(On His Seventy-fifth Birthday)

Salud, mi padre, on this festive day!

Gawd bless yr whiskers & yr mortal clay.

(& while we're at it, bless old Dios too,

Who needs our blessings far more, Paw, than you

Need his—for is He not our creature?

Modeled on man in every manly feature?)

But now salute the man & not the Ghost,

Fuck the eternal, bless the mortal host

Of friends assembled at this sagging board

Of baked & basted fowl, of meat & pumpkin gourd.

(Don't frown at my cliches, there's more to come.)

Make water into wine, by Christ! the sum

Of all we know & can desire is seen

Within the distilled grape, serene,

To which yourself can testify, old horse

(Referring here to our old man, of course)

Who roars & rages in his grand old age

With all the beauty of a classic sage—

Oh oe & noble, rare paternity,

High on 3/4 of a century!

Oh mountaineer of time, upon your dizzy height—

What lies beyond the day? beyond the night?

You need not answer, for we're climbing too

And soon enough will come to share the view

And share as well—why not?—that viney essence

Which does its best to justify our presence

Upon this bloody, sacrificial, beatific earth.

(Throw in an extra foot or two, who cares?

Does God not love to tangle pubic hairs?)

Which you, my woodsman Dad, have tramped

since birth.

Salud! No man was ever more alive

Than macho our old man at seventy-five!