Robert Pfeiffer

Becoming My Dad

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2025: VOL. 40.

We made fun of him for decades
because one night after dinner,
he suggested we stay a while
at the table, which had a view
of Kowloon Bay, and the other side
of Hong Kong beyond. Stunning,
we would certainly admit now.
“Let’s savor the ambiance,” he said,
and we mocked and mocked.
The diction so corny we couldn’t
see his desire to enjoy his life,
so much of which given over daily
to the pursuit of our comfort,
his tie tugged down, top button
popped open at the end of each day.

Years later, stateside, suburban
verging on country, families of deer
would wander through the backyard.
Dad would call us to come look.
At first, we’d go, then we wouldn’t,
until he stopped calling, and stood
at the kitchen window over the sink,
smiling, quietly watching all alone.

Then, when I was somehow the age
he was at that table in Hong Kong,
my dad and I drove across the country,
together, and from Atlanta to Seattle,
calling out the beauty and mystery
we passed along the way, each to each –
the wild horses in nowhere Kansas,
the Martian terrain of South Dakota,
the deepest green of the Pacific Northwest.

And now, when I turn towards home,
and the Cascades tower in the east,
evergreens edging the slopes like stubble,
my daughter side-eyes me: Don’t say it.
And when the deer stand faultlessly still
in the deep thicket beyond our backyard,
the snow drifting down like a dream,
my wife will catch me at the window
and I’ll know exactly what she’s thinking.
I smile: that’s just fine by me.

Robert Pfeiffer received his MFA and PhD in Creative Writing from Georgia State University. He has published three poetry collections: Bend, Break, The Inexhaustible Before, and most recently, Love’s Wishbone with Plain View Press out of Austin, Texas. He has just published his first novel, The Dark Unseen. He has had poems published in journals internationally such as The North Dakota Quarterly, The Connecticut River Review, Indefinite Space, Iodine Poetry Journal, The Height Ashbury Literary Journal, The Flint Hills review, Freefall Magazine, The Fourth River, and The Concho River Review. He spent twelve years as a Professor of English at Clayton State University where he taught Composition, Argumentation, Literature Surveys and Creative Writing. He continues to teach and publish in Seattle.