He stood with boiled fish eye,
Yet, hadn’t had a drink.
He had the wisdom in his family;
Yet they felt he couldn’t think.
He walked a different kind of path;
Not a bit like all the rest:
He was a rock-hound in the nature,
As he rode the wild-west.
He’d roam the graves in mountains;
The highland was his sea;
And mine a little turquoise
For the kinfolk in his tree.
A shack with purple bottles,
Turned by sunshine in his yard:
And he shared a many story,
As poetic as the Bard.
His pipe was made of pumice stone;
Its stem from desert reed.
And though he’d found love long ago,
He never left his seed:
And so, we had but one of him;
A dusty desert rat;
And he left a little desert sand,
Everywhere he sat.
He was a favorite Uncle:
Who was a great-great man;
His homestead in Bonanza;
His floor made up of sand;
And when he’d come to visit,
His smile brightened life;
And I knew adventure neared me
When he grabbed his fishin’ knife.
We’d go out late beneath the moon,
To gather up some worms:
And give them their last wishes
In their wiggles and their squirms.
The sun would rise; he’d wake me;
And a fishin’ we would go:
Old Uncle Frank, so gifted
He knew what fish would know.
I never will forget him,
He had a magic in his face;
You could see his crooked smile,
And his wonder and his grace.
His one leg bowed out to the side;
That limp which walked in rhyme:
But Uncle Frank, was Uncle Frank
Until the end of time.
Remembering the days of yore,
I wish he was still here.
I see him in the quiet groves
Summoning the deer:
For like the Klamath Indian
He spoke to nature’s call;
And though he lived with little,
His heart possessed it all.
The knowing of a life well lived:
His life of modest means;
Just a ragged-flannel shirt,
And worn out pair of jeans;
A life rich in adventure–
Seen through the twinkle of one eye;
While the boiled eye would wander,
Watching out for stormy skies.
His visits came but twice a year;
Though lifetimes lived in ‘tween:
Once when all the pear trees bloomed;
The other, Halloween.
He’s a character in my life’s book;
Writing words inside my days;
And he took me to those places
On trails only he could blaze.
My Uncle Frank; my man of steel;
With heart as pure as gold.
Thumbs split from all his labored work:
They were swollen; they were old.
And yet a year would never pass
That Uncle Frank wouldn’t come around–
And even though he’s left this world,
There’s no greater old rock hound.
Words by Robin Clark
© 2014 All Rights Reserved
My Uncle Frank, was my “Ol’ Dan Tucker”. I imagine, if we’re lucky enough, we all have one. Uncle Frank was a driving influence in my life. He was my Grandmother’s Uncle, a man of very little means but a heart bigger than the sky. He played a music I’d never heard in my childhood, nor my adulthood. If it was not his scratched-up calloused hands, scraping out a rhythm on an old pale or the bark on the tree… it was in the stretch of a rubber band over his tattered old washtub, or the sound of his worn boots on my Mama’s kitchen floor. Honestly, even the twinkle in his eye held a curious cadence.
In my world–my world of a young girl anxious to see the pear blossoms come to bloom, for as sure as my name is Robin, I knew Uncle Frank was soon to visit–he was magic. He knew songs, I didn’t know: I came to learn, long after his death, he made them up: He sang about the dying Indian Maiden; the dancing seeds struggling to hold on to the outside of their strawberry. He taught me how to tie my first fishing fly—which by the way, I am no better at it today, than I was then–he showed me that living in a cabin, with a dirt floor, didn’t mean you were dirty; it meant you lived closer to Mother Earth. He taught me how to charm night-crawlers from the ground and he confirmed what I already had learned…life is but a dream.
An oddball, by the words of his many brothers, he became a recluse. But our family and his niece, Grandma, loved him beyond the moon and the stars. Now, why was he odd? He walked his own path knowing all the while, life was his journey to live—not theirs. He was not influenced by love; by money; it was living truth that drove him to be generous in every way. It was what he knew to be part of the land; and for him, close to God.
I was fascinated by his old-turning lanterns in the hot dirt, around his cabin. His lawn was dizzying colors of lavenders; nothing but lead crystals finding their way to new treasures. I was raised where there were green fields and cattle… he, the old wanderer, was all about that which had been discarded and could be refashioned for some kind of use, even if it was just another way to see beauty. He was a wizard in the desert lands of Bonanza Oregon.
I remember his more than modest cabin with small-paned windows–always shiny like a fine crystal glass at your Aunties Thanksgiving table–an old distressed ¾ Victorian iron bed of white against one wall, next to his kitchen sink. A small table, wooden, re-fortified, which would conjure the vision of a humbled Monk preparing to dine, sitting in grace, sun shining in: high-lighting life’s bounties; and the old dirt floor, wooden in 6 inch planks, worn through to the dirt, sweeping was never enough: it never would be.
I remember old-fashioned lemonades with a cherry drop in them; it was his treat just for me. I know it cost him money and money wasn’t big in his reality—he bartered more than paid. He had a rock tumbler and carving utensils, and that was how he spent his winter days: Making jewelry for his family, carving out old-covered wagons and figures. He’d fish—never hunt; his heart was too soft to kill.
He instilled a romance in me. A romance for the simple; the small; the modest; the heart—a romance to inspire how I was to see life moving forward: Uncle Frank, my Superman without a cape; my dreamer; one of my inspirations.
We should all be so lucky to have an Uncle Frank in our lives. I do not cower, while it appears I might be gloating; I am just grateful to have had one.