The Living
by Trey Moody
I was ten when I locked my father’s college ring
inside my dresser’s wooden drawer to hide
his death from my friends who wanted to know
how it happened. Now, the ring’s tissue-wrapped
in a basement box mixed with family objects
my daughter might one day choose to donate
and I’ve said heart attack a thousand times and one.
After thirty years of thinking, I don’t think
my father didn’t love me. I’m not sure what the living
understand about love. When my daughter grew
fearful of finishing third grade, she asked how
not to be afraid, so we blessed with our bravery
one of her forgotten rings she then wore to school
on the index finger she used to show me something
worth seeing, like the face she once found
among burls grown into the trunk of a bur oak.
Originally published in The Atlantic.
Read other poems by Trey Moody in Thought That Nature, available for purchase online.
Occasionally, I come across a poem that seems to contain a whole world of feeling, held in the space of just a few lines. “The Living” by Trey Moody is one such poem, at the core of which is the speaker’s confession: “I don’t think/my father didn’t love me.” We hear uncertainty in that double-negative as well as in his next admission: “I’m not sure what the living/understand about love.” I appreciate the refreshing unknowing that sits at the heart of this poem, and the way the speaker’s relationship with his father, who died early, is redeemed by the love for his own daughter. The ceremony they make of “blessing” one of her forgotten rings so that she feels less afraid of finishing the third grade—and perhaps less fearful of life’s many transitions—shows us how tenderly this speaker treats her, preserving her sense of wonder in the final image in which she points with her ring finger to “the face she once found/among burls grown into the trunk of a bur oak.” Without needing to say so, the speaker implies that, if and when the time comes, he doesn’t want his daughter to have any doubt about how he feels for her.
Invitation for Writing & Reflection: We are so often trained to “write what we know,” pretending we have all the answers. Try writing about something that mystifies or confuses you, allowing your own sense of uncertainty to guide whatever surfaces. What don’t you know, and what do you feel unsure about?
ABOUT THE POET: Trey Moody
Trey Moody was born in San Antonio, Texas. His first book, Thought That Nature (Sarabande Books, 2014), won the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry. His more recent poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Believer, Crazyhorse, The Massachusetts Review, and New England Review. An assistant professor of English at Creighton University, he lives with his daughter in Omaha, Nebraska.
POETRY SELECTION AND COMMENTARY BY JAMES CREWS
James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. James teaches at SUNY-Albany and lives with his husband in Vermont.
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