A Father's Day Poem

Paul Romaine is the son of a longtime CWA member, Wilbur Ernest Romaine, who worked for Verizon/NewYork Telephone for 35 years. Paul says "that my first two years of attending college at Cornell were made possible because of the CWA's Joseph A. Beirne Scholarship."

He wrote this poem about his father.

As a boy my father's huge hands
with weathered fingers as thick as sausage
would splice cables or grab handholds
on telephone poles that he climbed each day,

but at night those huge fingers made
Rusty come to life at bed time
and Dad would talk to Rusty and me,
with Rusty groaning about being crushed
overnight when I rolled on top of him.

Hey! I would shout, and Rusty snuggled close
and told me that he loved me.

Dad gloried in his strength and control:
Arm wrestling match, pushing a mower,
or writing a check in his neat round hand.

But lately his hands were spotted and pale.
His fingers couldn't hold a pen steady,
and they even had trouble holding a fork.

So when I heard today that Dad had died,
I remembered those huge hands,
and how I never saw Dad, except at night,
and how those hands paid for a home
and protected us, and made a stuffed dog talk.