Book of the Week

 Pa by Peggy Trojan 

 

 

 

 By Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

After reading Peggy Trojan’s chapbook, PA, I can understand why Poet Ted Kooser enjoyed her poetry and featured her poem, Noon Hour, in American Life in Poetry. 

https://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/columns/detail/773.

In the powerful, poignant poetry chapbook, Pa, Peggy Trojan captures the character and personality of her father and the era in which he lived with description, dialect and dialogue of the day. The man who was larger than life, comes alive on the pages. We see his life unfold from boyhood to his death.

Peggy Trojan’s father, Wayne Lundeen, lived almost one hundred years. Oldest of eight, born on a Minnesota homestead in 1908, his zest for life set an example for everyone who knew him. He wrote and published his autobiography when he was ninety-four. Peggy followed in her father’s footsteps when she started writing poetry in her seventies and is still writing and publishing poetry at the age of ninety two.

Pa was awarded second place in the 2022 chapbook contest sponsored by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. 

Contest judge Margaret Hasse wrote these comments about the book:

 "Pa” by Peggy Trojan honors a father through 27 poems that remember him as a practical, generous, steady man. The "pa," who died at 98 years old, is often a living ghost in the poems, not spooky but a presence who "never gets /the hang of being dead." One poem titled "giving it up" is a remarkable list of activities that the engaged and energetic father with his XL hands could no longer do in his old age. These poems do not fall prey to the sentimentality that can color a collection of poems about a parent. Instead, each has a direct understated appeal. Many of the poems have been previously published, a testament to the quality of the work and the writer's commitment."

 

 Wayne Lundeen

 

These poems speak for themselves.

Life After Death

My father never gets
the hang of being dead.
He lives so long, so willingly,
he never accepts his life
is finished, done, kaput.
He appears at family gatherings,
presence comforting as wood smoke,
laughter swirling through the stories.
On trips out of town,
he grumps in the back seat, 
now that he can’t call shotgun.
This afternoon, there he was
at the table by the window,
easing his back into the sun,
looking for a cup of coffee
and a cinnamon roll. 

Photograph

Posed in the yard
Sophie, sitting, holding baby Ellen
husband Victor standing
wearing his suit jacket and good hat
hand on Wayne’s shoulder.

My father, age four,
shirt buttoned to the neck
hair slicked, pants safety pinned
hiding a bit behind his mother’s arm.
He looks intently into the camera lens
to what’s coming.
Past losing his right eye when he is ten
past the 1918 Hinckley fire
that takes their house and cows
and burns his pet ram black,
into the most terrible part
when his dad dies
leaving all eight of them and Sophie
on the farm with no aid or money.
He is already sad.

He can’t see just a little bit farther.
Far enough to see me
standing on the porch, waving.

Trilliums

When the snow melts
in the deepest shadows
of the Wisconsin woods
the white of wild trilliums
takes its place.
Though my father understood
the state had claimed them
as their own
and threatened fines
for anyone who argued,
he dared every May
to walk the south forty,
surprising
his sweetheart
with a large bouquet
of spring
offered in his wide
calloused hand.

Good Old Joe

Pa bought Joe thinking
he was a purebred Black Lab.
Soon it became clear there
had been a scandal in the family.
His hair grew long and curly,
his build stocky.
He was a quiet dog,
patient, intelligent, responsive.
Always ready to go exploring,
waiting at the mailbox
for the school bus.
Over the years his fear
of loud noise grew-
guns and thunderstorms
caused him to quiver
and come into the house,
once ripping our screen door
to shreds in his panic.

In old age he got distemper
with no cure known.
Pa took his gun and called,
twice because the gun
was obvious, and walked
with him to the far edge
of the field, by the woods.
The first shot missed
as tears blurred Pa’s vision.
Joe sat still and waited
for the second.

 

Something to Celebrate

When he was still in college
John and Darlene eloped.
Crossed over state line into Minnesota
one day without warning.
When Pa came home
from his construction job,
found us all sitting in the living room
with the news,
he went to wash up.

Twenty minutes later
he came out, cleanly shaven,
in a white shirt and tie
wearing his suit.
Dressed for the occasion
he strode across the room
to offer congratulations,
to shake my brother’s hand,
man to man.

How to Make Blueberry Pie

Enter Quinton swamp at last year’s faded marker.
Keep up with Pa, in his eighties and leading.
Deep in woods, where berries hang like grapes,
Powdery blue, warm, kneel.

Listen. “When I was six we took the horses….
water got warm and butter melted on the bread….”
Pretend you never heard of the 1918 fire.
“Dad put us eight kids in a circle in the field….
My pet ram was killed because he was burned black…”

When your pail is full, blindly follow Pa
through brush slapping your face. Have faith.
You come out right in front of the truck.
Admire the pickings. “By God, we did pretty good.”
 
Clean berries at picnic table under the pines.
Make crust while Pa makes filling.
Talk about how great berries were last year,
or was it the year before? “Man, it was just blue…..”

Let Pa slice it. “Gramma Uitto cut hers in four…..”
Put ice cream on your piece to cool it,
use a spoon for juice. Smack your lips and laugh
when Pa scrapes his plate, says again, “That’ll sell!”

The Pro

Ninety-seven,
he needed a cane to walk,
also someone to paddle
so he could concentrate on fishing.
Leo offered to take
him to Lake Superior
to fish from the shore,
not wanting to chance a canoe.
Drove to get bait,
Pa having determined
from years of experience,
it was a leech kind of day.

At the lake,
settled into a lawn chair
between other hopefuls
lining the bank.
Pa, from years of experience,
decided it was actually
a Rapala kind of day,
and changed bait.
His first cast bent
the rod way over,
convincing sign
he might already be stuck

giving it up

raising chickens
cows
gardening
traveling abroad
picking raspberries
fishing in Alaska
feeding the birds
canoeing
walking four miles a day
cross country skiing
flying across country by himself
cooking for company
computer correspondence
deer hunting
exercises on the floor
lifting weights
driving
baking bread
walking
making it to a hundred
everything

Last Dance

I regret
not bringing
a tape and player
to the nursing home
when my father
at ninety-eight
was fading.
He could have listened
to some Finnish waltzes
and spun my mother
around the wooden floor
of the old Lawler dance hall
until they were both
out of breath and dizzy
with love.


Vigil

I held my father’s hands
while he died.
Extra-large-glove-sized hands.
By the thumb, wide faded reminder
of the axe at seventeen.
Crooked finger, broken by the mower.
Myriad silver scars.
Callouses softened now.
Fingers that routinely hit
two computer keys,
drummed the table when impatient,
or bored.
Knuckles aged bony,
veins dark and visible.
At ninety-eight, the vellum skin
blotched.
Hands that skinned deer, built houses,
crimped pie crust.

We waited,
his firm grasp in mine.
When a thousand stars exploded,
he squinted hard,
and let me go.

To buy the book:
https://www.amazon.com/PA-Peggy-Trojan/dp/B09NS4ST2J