The Third & Fourth Generation

[brynmawr1]

The Third & Fourth Generation
       ~Numbers 14:18

Grandpa drove north in early summer,
never calling ahead.
He'd surprise us with late evening arrival,
expecting dinner.
Mom would make him another—            I agree that 'another' is confusing.  My reading is that 'Mom' has to cook an additional meal that evening but that isn't clear
that's how she was raised.

His dad left him without any warning
when he was seven.
His grandmother fed him without complaint—
that's how she was raised.

His grandfather's closest friend was opium.
They bonded during the civil war
over rifle fire and a shattered leg
that never fully healed.
They swapped war stories in silence
of the departed who wouldn't die.
It vanished in 1906,
pulled from the drug store's shelves.

He wept to his wife too many times,
and she told him, "Just go ahead
and do it already."
Grandpa found him the next morning
hanging by his neck from a cross-beam in the barn.

Grandpa would start wearing sweaters
the last week of August.
My brother and I would wake unaware
to a crisp, windy morning—
mom's face left behind to tell us
that he drove south during the night.

That's how he raised us, with unsparing rod:     I do think that the poem should end with something like this but it doesn't feel like he raised the narrator.  He raised the Mom and so on....
grandfathers vanish, so don't ever care.

I'm slightly unhappy with the piece, and I don't know why. Perhaps it's too whiny at the end? Is it overwritten? Underwritten? Does it read like prose? Something's missing   

Hi Lizzie,
I don't have many comments on the text except that noted above.  I did have one thought/suggestion to consider and that is to arrange the poem more chronologically, or more precisely, generationally.  The poem as I read it, given the title and how the poem has been written, is about generational pain and how it gets passed on from parent to child.  It seems to me that if the poem mirrored that progression it would provide a stronger link to the title and give the reader more to hold on to as they are carried to the end with the narrator giving insight on how this has affected them.  I also sense that there are aspects of the storyline that still aren't clear to the narrator and thus aren't fully articulated.  Of corse that would require more than just rearranging some stanzas.
Thanks for the read,
Bryn