my father's favorite president is theodore roosevelt 

theodore roosevelt is pacing
the floor of the attic--

always my father's favorite
president with his caterpillar 
mustache & his spectacles
perched on his nose--

i often mistake him for a grandfather--

trapped up there in the same
room as my own granfather's
urn of ashes--

most nights he sits in
the dark-- patient--
gazing out the screened windows
at the alien glow
of a small rural town--

counting automobiles 
as they wing beat down
noble street--

check his pocket watch--

my father told me stories
about him as if he 
were a god--

breaking big business
with a pick axe--

out of breath as 
he swung-- ruptured 
cement & concrete--

i imagined him standing 
at the desk in the 
oval office like
how i stand at mine when 
i'm too alive to sit--

he checks his pocket watch 
that has been dead for decades--
sets its carcass on
a book shelf & pages 
haphazardly through 
one of my childhood picture books--

the hungry caterpillar--

he scowls with the eyebrows 
he left in portraits--

i know he's up there but
i'm always too shy to
go visit him--

what with his stern face
& his pointy shoulders--

i would tell him that when
i was younger i believed 
he was the last good president--

i wrote book reports on
him & always included 
the story about his daughter
bringing a horse into the white house--

i told my own father 
that we could therefore 
fit a horse in our own 
little 19th century farm house--

even now when i've
moved away from my parent's house
i can still hear 

his astray foot steps 

as he ponders what brought
him there--

what forces bound him
to the attic with the green carpet 
& the half-built lego
star wars sets on the shelf--

we all have promised
now to give him any newspapers--

keep him pristine & 
unknowing 

sometimes i do leave
my poetry up there though
in the hopes that the
26th president might
find something of himself in it--

i wonder if as he
stares out the back window
if he imagines the landscape
of yellowstone or cliffs
in colorado--

will he one day cut holes
in our walls like
he did to panama? 

day dream floating on his back 
beside canal boats in
south america--

for now he's just perched on
the side of what used 
to be Billy's thomas
train table--

pocket knife whittling 
away a number 2 pencil--

his face stone-hovering 
on the black hills
of south dakota