© 2011 Kristy Feltenberger

FATHER'S RUBIK'S CUBE

White

Blue- eyed baby boy born during a winter whiteout

On March 2, sign of the twin fish 

 Like elder, dark-eyed brother, his Irish twin

 Blessed in a typical Catholic baptism 

 In an old coal mining town, southwestern, PA

 Where grey fog clouded the town even in summer

 And inside the home family members scattered to four corners

 Until baby-blue tumbled off the garage wall, cracked his skull and

 Dr. Tragedy discovered benign brain tumors

Orange

Suffering with tendonitis, pitched for baseball team and

Wrote for school newspaper although

 Spelling was poor, being gifted in math pleased his

 Perfectionist German father and

 Semi-sweet Irish mother but

 Couldn’t compete with golden-boy brother who taught

  Sometimes you win, more times you lose

 Although his gold never tarnished for he never failed

 Unlike his self-pitying, bronze medal brother

Red

 He meets her: honey-eyed, naive and passionate

 Spends a semester at college and stint in acting troupe

 Then off to Indiana and Kentucky reserve training 

 A plethora of obsessive love letters arrive before

 Saying I do, I do and moving into a 

 Trailer park and months of unemployment before a

 Blue eyed, summer baby girl arrived and he

 Celebrated with Budweiser and Copenhagen snuff

 On a daily intoxicating basis

Green

Extended Irish family in Boston offers employment

 Of steady but back breaking construction work to

 Support a winter blue-eyed baby boy, blonde four-year-old

 And lonely wife who had no one but her children and

 Husband who continued to drink, drank, drunk

 Away the paychecks until a bundle of steel fell upon him

 And the pain turned to angry self pity and he abused

 His son, daughter and honey-eyed wife until she lied

 And relocated to PA, not for vacation but forever

Yellow

 His wife returned to Boston with her four brothers and left

 Him high and dry with only a six pack and a toaster oven

 So he packed up his wife beater tank tops and followed his

 Parents to central FL where they retired in an adult community

 And he to a rundown fishing village and lost touch with his

 Golden-boy brother who climbed up, up, up in rank and

  Joined the Air Force Paratrooper Special Forces 

 While he slowly lost his eyesight from the constant brain

 Tumors growing like poison ivy

Blue

After years of a strained relationship, his blue-eyed son

 Cut the ties and stopped peeing the bed and stuttering

 But his daughter held onto the fleeting memories of watching

 Lighting storms and counting the seconds between crackles

 With her father, who was once her hero, but she let go of the

 Balloon string when he failed to show at her wedding

 While he damned God for his misfortune instead of

 Helping himself by asking for help rather than

 Peeling off once bright but now faded stickers 

All work is property of Kristy Feltenberger.

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