The Journey with Jesus: Poems and Prayers
Selected by Dan Clendenin
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)
My Papa's Waltz
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Theodore Roethke, "My Papa's Waltz," from The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Copyright © 1940, 1954 by Theodore Roethke. Copyright © 1942 by Hearst Magazines, Inc.