gut shot
By Dougie Padilla
i am 68 now. my father lived only three years more than this. he finally left, aching and filled with the kind of pain that a moose feels, gut shot up north along the border, out on the edge of some lost lake, the ice just beginning to move out, the lake just beginning to reappear. i can feel his breath now. i can feel my father’s breath now, his last breath. i can see it in the air.
Dougie Padilla
Dougie Padilla is a MN/WI poet and artist. He has published four chapbooks and four full length books of poetry. He is largely an autodidact, but learned much from years around Robert Bly. His poetry loves have included Hart Crane, Dylan Thomas, Blake, Lorca, Gary Snyder, Su Tung Po, Ikkyu, and Hafez. Dougie writes in many styles, from lyric to memoir t…