Keep the Wheat and Let the Chaff Lie

                        There’s an old pair of shoes
                        resting on the extension ladder
                        in my garage.  A pair of black Florsheim
                        wing tips, now scuffed, worn down in the heel
                        white paint splattered across the tops,
                        the lining of one torn and curled, the other missing.
                        They’ve been nesting on that ladder since l980.
                        Twenty years I’ve cleaned that garage, spring and fall.
                        Forty times, I’ve returned them to their perch.
                        My papa’s shoes.  Once proudly polished
                        preserved with metal shoe trees inside.

                        Papa never bought sneakers or casual clothes.
                        When his good clothes wore, he used them to
                        work around the house or yard.  Once, he’d been
                        depression poor.  Lost his house and sun-kissed fig tree.
                        Later, he spent money on beef roasts, schooling
                        for his children, books and bikes for my babies.
                        Throwing out old clothes, buying new ones for work
                        a frivolous waste.

                        These shoes he kept in my garage
                        along with frayed dress pants
                        a faded oxford shirt, a torn sweater.
                        He’d walk five blocks from his home to mine
                        impeccably dressed, not to embarrass me
                        before my neighbors.  This gentle man
                        immigrant with broken tongue,
                        former farmer,  friend of grape vines
                        olive trees, and sweet,  black soil
                        displaced in a city.

                        He’d change clothes in my garage
                        sweep the leaves from my winding drive
                        nourish my azaleas with cow manure
                        weed my favorite flower beds
                        plant forsythia and hydrangeas he’d rooted
                        make my house and yard look loved,
                        richer than the houses of my neighbors
                        whose hired gardeners manicured their lawns.

                        No one’s perfect.
                        My mother had stories.
                        My older brother too.
                        Mother used to say
                        “You don’t know your father.
                        Once, he ripped his custom made
                        silk shirt in two because he lost a
                        button, and us with no money.”
                        My older brother’d say about my parents
                        “When I was a boy, they’d go at it.”
                        He’d shake his head.

                        But I know none of that.
                        I remember him legally blind at 80
                        gently lifting tomato seedlings he’d grown
                        as if they were eggshells or waterford
                        placing them in rows in my garden
                        staking them with tree branches
                        he’s stripped for the purpose
                        tying them with rags, he’d uniformly cut
                        to save us money.

Mary Ann Vigilante Mannino