One Died Today

I had three grandfathers.

Two of them already died

Some years ago the one

On my father’s side,

Canadian, a rock, warm as a hug,

Whom I loved like a father

And the two on my mother’s side—

The one you never mentioned

To avoid the chill

At the kitchen table

Or at Thanksgiving dinner

Or Easter dinner the one

With the glass eye

And the weakness for women

And a daily carafe of Chianti

The kind of painter’s talent

You can’t buy, to die for

Who slept on your childhood

Couch and appeared sometimes

Seven in the morning

On the bus you took to school

So drunk you shrunk

Behind the girl with the big hair

In the seat in front of you

And the other one, the boxer

And punchdrunk bartender who

Filched the till and spent

All summer floating on his back

A few yards off a Dennisport

Beach, gorging on quahogs

Back at the cottage full of aunts

And uncles and cousins

And grandma running the show

The one who punched out

The eye of the painter grandfather

One drunk afternoon making

Sure you felt it when you went past

His lazy-boy in the living room

Right in that meaty part

That thigh muscle so vulnerable

To a quick left hook, or a pinch

Above the knee.  He died

Today.  I don’t know how I feel

With so much joy and pain

Mixed together.  He was 90, life

Enough for anyone.  He loved

My mother as if she were his daughter

And that should be enough for me.