Steve Coughlin
Song of Escape
I celebrate the 972 miles that separate me
from my father's house. And every hotel and vacation rental unit
I pass each time I drive to visit him. Instead of returning
the phone call of my grieving father who--
three years after my mother's death--
still refuses to sit in her spot on the couch,
I want to float like a weightless balloon
across the state of Ohio, high above the bland nothingness
of the Midwest, to any of the elite hot spring resorts
in northern California. Instead of thinking
of the numerous hours my father walks around the neighborhood
avoiding all the rooms that once contained his family,
I want to celebrate the finely aged bottle of Zinfandel
that would be placed before me
atop a table of richly embroidered cloth.
And each afternoon I would most likely visit
all three of the resort's exclusive espresso bars
to indulge in several extra-large, high-fat hazelnut macchiatos.
And each evening I'd disappear into the private library--
adorned with numerous upholstered chairs--
to read from a safe, manageable distance the harsh realism
of any of Theodore Dreiser's major works.
And even if my father discovered where I was
and mysteriously arrived in his black swimming trunks
and lowered his seventy-seven-year-old shoulders
into the curative hot spring water beside me,
Franz--the resort manager--would know to turn the radio dial
from the station repeatedly playing
Bob Dylan's album Blood on the Tracks to the Red Sox game.
Instead of again discussing the lack of nutrition
in my father's nightly dinner of peanut butter and crackers
we would listen in silence to David Ortiz
launch a homerun into the right field bleachers.
And even if my father announced his intention
to spend another few days at this private resort
and that through sheer good fortune
he had reserved the room next to mine
there would still be the double-bolted door
which my father could not unlock
and thick walls to help drown out his blaring television
and there will be state-of-the-art pillows
which would invite me into the deepest sleep
so far from my father
pacing in the next room
that no matter how loud he might call my name
I could not possibly be expected to hear.