Flicker and Hawk sunday afternoon on sunday afternoons all the fathers in town slept I think they dreamed of old days and death sometimes you could hear them cry the summer air was still at the window flies on the screen and the radio playing softly in the kitchen mother slid a fresh matrimonial cake onto potholders on the stove picked up a book a true book of someone else's life sunglasses a pitcher of lemonade and a straw hat spread a blue blanket in the backyard near the lilac shrubs for shade lay down one ear hearing children in the garden she never escaped all the way nor did she want to not quite this much on a sunday afternoon went a long way downtown boys rode main street toward fiery crashes they imagined twisted wrecks with radios playing rock 'n' roll insulting the highway townspeople gathered on the shoulder standing as near as they could to the impossible moment between what's here and not a girl's body sprawled in the ditch no one knew at first whose daughter she was though someone pulled her skirt down for decency the smell of alcohol and fuel everywhere her lipstick so so red beneath the headlights they couldn't take her eyes from her lips what was she doing in a wild car like that? who was she? at night I shivered in bed wondering how to get out of town side-stepping wrecks they were everywhere on all the roads heading out toward the lights and laughter a dented hubcap an amazing shoe with its laces still done up made you wonder how someone could step right out of a shoe like that like the flesh was willing or surprised or not there to begin with in nightmares angry lords walked through my room it took my breath away how ferocious love could be sometimes jesus hung on the wall or was it the shadow of an elm? in the morning at the kitchen table green tomatoes on the window sill we held devotions with careful hands father's eyes focussed hard on me so he wouldn't remember but of course he did listening often to mother's sunny childhood dreams I thought I was free I was a child with a dancing mother and my town was filled with children and my town had backstreets and sheds and black dogs and sugar trees but she disappeared and he died and I got out I'm getting out I'm getting out what I left there the child gathering raspberries in an enamel bowl he's not dead he went back to where you are before you're born again waiting for the next time and another town what others have said: "Pat Friesen is a philosopher of the human condition...rooted in the premise that people's lives are important. These poems ask questions that are worth knowing...they are tough and beautiful. They are incendiary to the spirit!" (Allan Safarik, on Flicker and Hawk)