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.
The lines that say "The wiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy"; "My right ear scraped a buckle", and "You beat time on my head with a palm caked hard by dirt, then waltzed me off to bed still clinging to your shirt," clearly demonstrate where they would get that inferance. But the way that I see it, like my poems point of view is that the father works hard. He had just come home from work because maybe hes a construction worker, his wife cooked dinner and during dinner he had a few drinks. After dinner the father went to the kitchen with his son and they started to waltz the father counting the time of the steps on the child's head "Dun dun dun-pause-dun dun dun" a classic waltz beat. While the father is moving and their stomping they're making a mess in the kitchen and the mother who had been working all day to clean the house and had finally gotten the kitchen perfect was mad because they destroyed it. The way that I interpreted this poem was that there was no child abuse therefore a few lines should not imply child abuse. But all people are entitled to their opinions...
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.
The lines that say "The wiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy"; "My right ear scraped a buckle", and "You beat time on my head with a palm caked hard by dirt, then waltzed me off to bed still clinging to your shirt," clearly demonstrate where they would get that inferance. But the way that I see it, like my poems point of view is that the father works hard. He had just come home from work because maybe hes a construction worker, his wife cooked dinner and during dinner he had a few drinks. After dinner the father went to the kitchen with his son and they started to waltz the father counting the time of the steps on the child's head "Dun dun dun-pause-dun dun dun" a classic waltz beat. While the father is moving and their stomping they're making a mess in the kitchen and the mother who had been working all day to clean the house and had finally gotten the kitchen perfect was mad because they destroyed it. The way that I interpreted this poem was that there was no child abuse therefore a few lines should not imply child abuse. But all people are entitled to their opinions...
