Driving through Georgetown
on a congested Friday afternoon,
I find myself stopped
behind a truckload of bricks
and my father comes to me--
red brown in Portuguese skin.
"I'm a bricklayer by trade,"
he often says,
and his hands show it--
all calloused like tree bark.
I could drive though my hometown
and show you the homes
he built with those two hands
and biceped arms
and a back that bent
as he spread the mortar.
"I built my own house,"
he says, and he did--
built it with his sweat
and sinewy muscle,
built it so well
that it would take
a doomsday earthquake
to crack it down.
My father is a bricklayer.
He is a house
with an invincible frame--
filled with bricks and mortar.
And so as I drive down M street
and turn right up Wisconsin--
scuttling to another appointment
in another office,
I look in the rear view window,
and adjust the earring in my ear.
I'm a different boy than father,
but I can't pass a truck of brick,
or a brick sidewalk, or a brick anything
without thinking how much I am like him.
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