A knot so tight it has taken all my life to untie...

Trying to tie my shoes, clumsy, not able to work out
the logic of it, fumbling, as my father stands there,
his anger growing over a son who can’t even do
this simplest thing for the first time, can’t even manage
the knot to keep his shoes on—You think someone’s
going to tie your shoes for you the rest of your life?—
No, I answer, forty-five years later, tying my shoe,
hands trembling with this memory. My father
and all those years of childhood not being able to work out
how he loved me, a knot so tight it has taken all my life
to untie.

"Knots" by Joseph Stroud from Of This World. © Copper Canyon Press, 2009.

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Joseph Stroud was born in Glendale, California. A poet and translator Joseph Stroud was educated at the University of San Francisco; California State University, Los Angeles; and San Francisco State University. Using a variety of formal approaches, Stroud’s poems address a wide range of historical and international settings. In a 2009 Bookslut review of Of This World, critic John Madera praised Stroud’s “recognition of our frailty, forgetfulness and inattention, amidst the noise of avarice, war, and other distractions, coupled with a profound and compassionate awareness of everything that breathes around him.” {Source}


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